


The Last True Decepticon

by Languidly



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:46:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Languidly/pseuds/Languidly
Summary: Soundwave’s voice sounded remarkably patient even without inflection, as though he wasn’t just writing off four million years of war. “Freedom, original Decepticon purpose. Peace, current Decepticon goal."
Relationships: Jazz/Soundwave (Transformers)
Comments: 80
Kudos: 258





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There seems to be a JazzWave event going on, and since I've had this WIP sitting in my folders, it felt like a good time to start posting it ;) Set sometime after the events of Dark Cybertron, when the Autobots and the Decepticons came together to battle Shockwave, after which Megatron renounced the Decepticons and went onboard The Lost Light.

The cold air sharpened the metallic smell of the dock as Jazz clambered down the disembarkation ramp. It was oddly quiet, just the low bickering of his two fellow passengers and the scurrying of the dock worker outside the shuttle. After thousands of years sneaking onto Decepticon bases and witnessing the chaos of too many adrenaline-charged mechs confined in too-small spaces, the total absence of petty fighting and jeering was downright jarring.

But of course, that was the crux of what had brought Jazz here in the first place. 

Since Megatron’s defection to the Autobots and the subsequent retreat of the Decepticons under Soundwave and Galvatron, there had been fewer and fewer incursions over the past stellar cycles. Autobot intelligence had been able to track that the majority of the Decepticons - including, presumably, the current Decepticon leadership - had regrouped and relocated to a small distant planet. It was fairly newly-minted, as far as a world went; the 571-Class Nelign had only been charted and designated several vorns ago. It received its sparse dusky light from a giant burning star several hundred thousand light years away, as well as the orbital cycles of a large nearby moon. At the time, it had been marked as unpopulated, seemingly barren and with surface temperatures hovering significantly below comfortable. In a word, it'd sounded _gloomy_.

And yet, clearly, there was something Autobot intelligence was missing. Because in the short amount of time since the Decepticons had landed here, they had managed to build a functional space dock, and as Jazz emerged from the squat dusty building, what looked to be the beginnings of a thriving city. 

The lack of usual Decepticon activity had been glaring enough that Prowl had convinced Optimus to send an agent to Nelign to suss out whatever plots were afoot. It was simply too uncharacteristic to hear no news at all. The relentless conquests of alien planets had all but stopped, and the violent battles over the known energon mines over various worlds had petered out into nothing. Were the Decepticons building a new weapon? What were they up to?

Jazz had been more than a little interested when Prowl had sent the assignment his way. He'd been nearing the limits of his patience when it came to keeping an optic on the newly-elected leader of Cybertron and his lackeys, especially with Starscream’s special brand of posturing and the perpetual high-pitched complaining about the limited resources they all had to work with now. If Jazz had to sneak a look at one more report outlining regulations for the new housing that was being built to cater to the influx of NAILs and other colonists, he would short out his own visor. 

No, Jazz was much, much more curious about what Soundwave was up to. 

The tall, silent mech had always been a mystery. Throughout their war, Soundwave was the only one that Jazz might admit came close to matching his skills at finely-layered sabotage. There had been countless industrial-level encrypted communiques that did nothing but mislead the Autobots into going on wild chases or engaging in preventative strategies that sapped their resources and met no fruition. How many times had the Autobots’ internal directives been intercepted and their missions changed or challenged? How many times had they gotten to a raid too late? Too many than Prowl would ever admit.

Soundwave didn’t wear his spark on his armor like Starscream still did, or flout his power and leadership like Megatron once had. Yet, something about the Decepticon third-in-command - now Decepticon Commander, Jazz reminded himself - had always pulled Jazz’s visor to that unreadable visage. For all Soundwave’s fearsome reputation and even fiercer abilities, the mech was almost-unfairly easy on the optics. 

When Megatron had been placed aboard the Lost Light and sent on the quest to find the Knights of Cybertron, Jazz had heard the whispers the same as everyone else - that Soundwave was the last true Decepticon, the only one left to follow. Perhaps it had begun even before that; calm, brilliant Soundwave always having been the natural foil to Megatron’s raw charisma and Starscream’s impetuous showiness. With both of the more prominent Decepticons out of the picture, it was indisputable that Soundwave was now the main rallying point for the enemy. And the fact that the Autobots had seen or heard nothing of him for so long was worrying, to say the least.

So here Jazz was, with dull gray muting his white, red accents painted over, his blue visor swapped out for a dark yellow and a battered Decepticon insignia slapped on his chassis, wandering straight into the heart of enemy territory as blasé as he pleased. He’d added a bit of extra kibble to his finials to change the distinctive look of his helm without encumbering his usual movement as well. Venturing into the unknown and the thought of discovering whatever was being hidden here sent a lick of excitement up his circuitry.

More mechs flowed around him here, unhurried and raucous. Domed lamps were mounted in mostly-regular spaces along the street and several were flickering to life just now; Jazz had arrived right at the start of the dark cycle. He spotted a bar ahead, its door propped open, tinny music flowing out and three mechs walking in, jibing and laughing. Above the establishment, a neon sign shaped crudely out of unevenly-bright fluorescent tubes read [ ALT MOOD ]. From within, there was a distinctively familiar voice snapping at someone to sit the slag down and to wait for their order. Grinning, he ambled towards it, as casual and at ease as the mechs who preceded him.

Sure enough, upon rounding the corner, he spotted Swindle in a flail of orange and purple limbs behind the bar. The enterprising Combaticon was shaking up something fizzy and alarmingly pink while hissing at a large mech who was taking up more than half the space there, cackling and slapping the countertop with a lot more force than was probably necessary. Vortex, of course. The other customers were keeping a sensible distance away from those lethal rotors.

On the right side at the very end, a bulky old-fashioned jukebox stood, currently emanating a wail of an old Cybertronian tune. There was a row of small booths lining the left wall, and the last one closest to the bar looked unoccupied, the bulb dimmed. It would be a good spot for listening in on whatever Swindle and Vortex were talking about, and also a perfect vantage point from which to watch the rest of the room. Jazz slid his way smoothly between two full tables, angling himself towards the corner. He deftly snatched a menu from the stack behind the cashier, before pulling himself up and into the seat.

Swindle noticed him then and gasped, shoving Vortex’s drink at him and leaping forward to grab at Jazz, babbling, “Hey, you, you can’t- ”

Too late, Jazz realized the booth was not empty at all, and that sitting in the semi-darkness out of sight from the entire room was an entirely too-familiar frame. Dark blue hands clasped an empty cube. Jazz let his gaze travel up, and up, across the broad glassed chassis, the dark silver mask and the gleaming red visor that was currently fixed on him, and felt an almost giddy laugh of disbelief bubbling up in his intake. 

Soundwave. He’d found Soundwave without even _trying_.

He was hauled out of the booth in the next nanoklik, Swindle already spewing frantic apologies as the mech’s fingers spasmed painfully on Jazz’s arm. Jazz had to tamp down on the instinctive urge to swing around with the momentum and twist a blade into Swindle’s neck cables. Instead, he let his visor flare with affected shock and deliberately tripped over his own feet. He wasn’t a heavy bot, but neither was Swindle, and they stumbled back as one clumsy entanglement before Swindle’s backstrut smacked into the bar with a clang.

Vortex looked at them incredulously, and then burst into maniacal laughter. 

Jazz tore himself free of Swindle’s grasp, processor already speeding through the most likely scenarios for getting out of this. With any luck, he’d be able to stammer out an excuse, make a hasty escape without Soundwave having gotten too close of a look at him - not that Jazz had ever been this close to the former third-in-command before, and definitely not in this new disguise, which hopefully meant he was at least not instantly recognizable -

“Designation?”

Swindle froze in the middle of trying to grab Jazz again. Soundwave wasn’t looking at them anymore, but it was clear that he was addressing Jazz. Slag it.

“I’m, uh, Leftstep.” He put a wobble in his voice and hunched in on himself, bowing pitifully low as though in stunned remorse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I- I didn’t see you- ”

Soundwave’s helm was tipped down as if he was considering his cube, but Jazz had the oddest sensation that he was being watched, and well and truly assessed. He forced a quiver into his struts, still bowing low, waiting to be dismissed.

“Leftstep, may sit.”

What? 

“Oh, Soundwave, there’s no need, there’s lots of room over there!” Swindle’s hearty laugh sounded patently false and just a touch terrified. “Leftstep here will just be leaving you in peace and making his way to - see, that nice little table - ” this last he directed to Jazz, shoving him forward and off-balance in his haste.

“Soundwave, does not mind company.”

Swindle’s jaw dropped. Jazz was unable to completely mask his own knee-jerk reaction, stiffening under Swindle’s grip on his shoulders. Autobot intelligence had always made a note of Soundwave’s telepathic abilities, but the extent of that power had never been detailed. Jazz had always been a little skeptical. Would he be able to read Jazz just from sitting across him? Did it require a hardline? Touch? Staring for a klik into his visor? It was more likely a modification of some sort, and not knowing was too dangerous. 

But when would such a chance present itself again, in a setting where blaster fire was not being exchanged? If Soundwave couldn’t read Jazz without a hardline, this would be the perfect opportunity to gain firsthand information from the new Decepticon commander. The extreme risk was balanced by the possibility of an equally high reward. 

That, and Jazz had never been able to resist flirting with danger. 

He had a special protocol, locked away for the extreme circumstances in which he found himself captured or incapacitated. It would temporarily throw up a maze of additional firewalls around the part of his programming that kept him cognizant of his designation, his role within the Autobots and whatever mission parameters he had been given, not to mention return a blank on any of the other specifics of Special Operations, personnel or strategy. It was a heavy and complicated safeguard, particularly effective against external probing, although the toll it took on the rest of his processing to maintain it was hardly efficient or needed for daily espionage. Jazz had only ever used it once before, in a situation where he had had to be literally pieced back together by the time the rest of his team had finally gotten him out. 

It didn’t appear - at least not yet - that it would be anywhere near the same outcome in this scenario. But it would add a layer of security for whatever Soundwave might try with him. The code had been written with a split-second activation of necessity in mind, and it was simple enough to find the hidden string and send the command. 

It was just as well he had made that decision, because in the next moment Swindle was practically thrusting Jazz back into the booth without so much as asking if he still wanted to be seated. “What’s your poison, Leftstep?”

Uh. Jazz swept his visor over the menu and then, brightening, jabbed at the Shattered Autobot Spark cocktail. Hopefully it’d be as bitter as the name suggested. Swindle nodded and tore the menu away from his fingers, retreating so quickly back behind the bar that it seemed as if he had his wheels on. 

At some point, Soundwave had raised his helm and now he was staring evenly at Jazz again, that solid frame holding itself completely still. Jazz could feel the beginnings of a delighted purr in his engine - the tingle of being in the _game_ \- but Leftstep was probably not supposed to be bold, or cheeky, or any of the other things that an average Decepticon should feel when suddenly faced with their highest commander for the first time. He ruthlessly silenced all of the reactions that could give him away, before deciding that visibly fidgeting with his fingers would be appropriate to the situation.

“Leftstep, new to Nelign?”

He let his gaze stay low, fixed to the tabletop. Let his voice emerge slightly discomfited, as though he was feeling both awkward and in awe. “Yea. Yea, I just got here. From Helix-72, earlier this orn.” There had been a sizable Decepticon outpost located on Helix, especially known for recruiting Neutrals throughout the war. Jazz was willing to bet his last shanix that administration there had not been particularly exacting. It made the likelihood of tracing his false identity that much more difficult. 

Soundwave gave a small hum. “Helix, received recall order three orbital cycles ago. Leftstep, a bit later than most.” 

The most convincing lies were always mixed with half-truths. Jazz turned his helm aside as if embarrassed. “I- I wasn’t sure about coming here. I didn’t know what to expect. So much happened, and after great Megatron abandoned the cause…” He threw in a hitch in his vents for good measure, and noticed out of the corner of his visor when Soundwave stiffened a micron at the mention of Megatron’s name.

Swindle chose that moment to sidle up and slide Jazz’s order furtively onto the table, before backing away hurriedly. Jazz eyed the murky concoction with some trepidation, except that he had no good reason for not drinking it now beyond the fact that he was an Autobot standing on a knife’s edge of being discovered. There was always the possibility that he would be drugged or intoxicated, though his fuel intake moderation chip had been modified to withstand most known chemicals and permanently engaged several thousand years ago. 

“Shattered Spark, strong.” Soundwave said calmly. “Leftstep, should consume slowly, if not seasoned drinker.”

Well, Soundwave was almost making it too easy. Jazz was torn between rising to the bait and doing the sensible thing of taking Soundwave’s advice. If he only took a small sip, the FIM chip and his specialized chemical analysis and breakdown protocols would be able to assess the ingredients within a klik and alert him if anything was potentially damaging. But there had been...almost an unspoken challenge in Soundwave’s words. 

A dare.

Jazz picked up the cube and took a large swig. Instantly, heat flared in his mouth, down his intake, even over his _lips_. He swallowed and sputtered, unable to help the cough. “Is- is this jet fuel?!”

Even through the dead silence of the mech sitting across from him, Jazz got the distinct impression that Soundwave was amused.

“Leftstep, asked about what to expect here. Work, much available. Jobs, listed every orn on main screen, central block. Suggestion, Leftstep check main screen after recharge, choose one of interest.”

Jobs? _Jobs?_ Not assignments? And choosing one out of _interest_? 

The confused frown came naturally, though he had to slow his racing thoughts down and make himself stutter. “Are- are we building a new ship? Or- making a new weapon? Where are we fighting next?”

Soundwave’s visor dimmed. Jazz noticed distractedly that those large strong hands were still curved relaxedly around the empty cube. Pity that Soundwave had already finished his drink; Jazz was feeling the urge - not for the first time - to see what lay behind that silver mask. 

“Leftstep, a bit later than most.” Soundwave answered finally. “Decepticons, no longer fighting.”

Jazz checked his audial receptors to make sure they were recording. He had the feeling he would be re-listening to this several times. “What?” he croaked. It wasn’t even difficult to feign shock.

“Nelign, new home world.” Soundwave’s voice sounded remarkably patient even without inflection, as though he wasn’t just writing off four million years of war. “Freedom, original Decepticon purpose. Peace, current Decepticon goal. Nelign, offers both.”

Jazz took another gulp of his drink, managing not to choke on it this time. Warmth spread for several nanokliks in his frame before the atrocious liquid was wicked up by his FIM chip protocols. “So- so we’re just giving up?” he demanded. “We’re not fighting the Autobots anymore?”

Soundwave inclined his helm. The red visor glimmered. 

“Fighting, no longer serves purpose. But surrender, unnecessary.” 

Jazz stared at him, then triggered his smallest sensors and reached out, slowly and unobtrusively. Soundwave’s EM field was completely serene. It was as if...as if Soundwave was telling the _truth_. 

“So we’re...free?” Jazz wasn’t quite sure what he was fishing for, but it seemed like the right question. Soundwave’s visor flashed, a dazzling nanoklik of light.

“Affirmative. Decepticons, free.”

Oh, Prowl was going to glitch. Hard.


	2. Chapter 2

Slipping through the shadows of various streets, he'd found rentable quarters affordable with the limited shanix he’d brought with him. In short order, Jazz was standing in a small room with mismatched corrugated walls. The gnarled, twisted sheet of metal masquerading as a berth had been plonked unceremoniously against the side, which held a small slanted window. It looked out over the street from the second floor, and a ragged slip of green mesh hung limply from it, a curtain he could pull to block out the hazy light. It was functional, if nothing else. 

These were clearly living spaces that had been put together in a hurry, but still offered a modicum of privacy. Jazz had passed rows of open lots where mechs large and small simply lolled side by side on the ground in recharge, plugged into the most basic of sockets and sheltered only by raised tarps.

For all that there was a distinct lack of luxury everywhere he looked, there was none of the thrumming, restless energy that a mech should feel in the middle of a slagging army. For want of a better word, the Decepticons all seemed _relaxed_. Even if Soundwave had been lying his aft off in the bar earlier - as unlikely as that was, Jazz wouldn’t put anything past him until he had better familiarized himself - everything that Jazz saw so far fit the picture that Soundwave had painted. 

Soundwave had excused himself with a wordless nod while Jazz was choking back his second drink, a warmed and aptly-named Cogsucker that might as well have been made of half-processed energon, perhaps scooped up straight from Insecticon remains. Swindle, who had been shooting mistrustful glares in his direction all throughout the evening, had given him a look of begrudging respect when he saw that Jazz had emptied his cube. The wary hostility had further eased a fraction when Jazz had dropped his payment on the counter along with a completely undeserving tip before pushing himself out of the bar.

On the way to where he had eventually found accommodation, he had passed what looked like two paint shops, seen several bold and artless advertisements for “THE DECEPTICON DERBY! RACE FOR YOUR LIFE!” and even passed by a rickety _sweets cart_ \- Jazz had had to run a diagnostic on his visual feed just to confirm what he was seeing. He’d have to drop by soon and see what manner of treats Decepticons were into.

He’d found the central block easily enough due to its main decoration: a ridiculously-oversized screen that towered over him and that looked like it could have been repurposed straight from the bridge of a worldsweeper. It was fixed solidly to the ground with large rivets, and mechs of all shapes and sizes idled around it. Jazz had had to reroute at least six threat recognition processes and the corresponding pings to terminate. It had most certainly been Breakdown being reluctantly pulled around by Drag Strip, and yes, that’d been Skywarp chattering furiously with a much more sedate Thundercracker as the former jabbed at a particular line scrolling past on the screen. An icy thrill had danced up his backstrut; Jazz was literally in the middle of some of the enemy’s best soldiers, and none of them were even taking a second glance at him. He could take at least two of them out before they’d even know what hit them, and then disappear back into the dark. Or if he used some of the more questionable devices he’d brought along, he could take _all_ of them out, and they’d be none the wiser.

But that was not the mission this time. 

Shrugging it off, he’d slunk to one side, carefully keeping himself small, and then looked up at the job postings scrolling across the screen. It was almost enough to make him bite his glossa. 

Miners wanted? Research assistants? Builders? _Dancers_?

Jazz had to surreptitiously give his helm a hard shake to dispel the images of the last one. He would not go there. 

A new job, tagged with the orn’s date, rolled into view: 

**Courier mechs wanted, Command Headquarters.**

That sounded promising. 

There were not many details; Jazz would just have to show up during the next light cycle and meet the overseer. But it was a perfect chance to delve deeper into the workings of this ‘Decepticon freedom’ that Soundwave had mentioned, and being at the command center would also allow him to keep an eye on not just Soundwave but whoever was helping to run all of this. Prowl had been firm that they should also find out what Galvatron was up to. With a bit of luck, Jazz would be able to investigate further at the source and see if any tricks were lying under the peaceful facade. 

Decision made, he’d promptly circled back and walked along until he’d found the room for rent. 

The wash-racks here were a communal affair. It’d seemed prudent to rinse off before any of the quarters’ other occupants came back and decided to use it, so Jazz had hopped in for a quick shower. His armor still smelled faintly of the harsh solvent, and the tepid liquid had done nothing to ease the small kinks in his cables that he’d gotten from sitting hunched over in the small shuttle from Helix. But the worst of the dust was gone now and his cover paint job was still holding nicely. 

Hopping lightly up onto the uneven berth and stretching out to find the least uncomfortable position, Jazz opened up his secure communications channel and blasted off a quick message. He threw in the observations he’d made in succinct points and tagged each one with a list of the mechs he had identified, signing off by stating he would remain Nelign-bound for perhaps a deca-cycle more to confirm. He reread it quickly but as he was about to send it, his fingers hesitated over the glyph for Soundwave. 

The mech’s long blue fingers, loosely clasped, and the barest traces of amusement in that gleaming red visor came to the forefront of his processor again. Soundwave was a threat, through and through. A perilous puzzle that bore solving.

Yes, Jazz was definitely looking forward to seeing Soundwave again. He was going to get into that famously-unreadable processor one way or the other.

He sent off the message to Prowl, locking it doubly with his personal encryption code before settling down for the day. The twisted-up edge of the berth dug awkwardly into one shoulder, but Jazz had had much worse before. He dropped off into a light recharge instantly. 

***

It appeared that Decepticons were, as a general rule, not for rising bright and early with the light cycle. 

Jazz had onlined after a short but thorough defrag and recharge just as the first pricks of pale light seeped in through the ugly green curtain. He’d stretched out the remaining crimps in his wires and then checked over his inventory in the hidden subspace compartment behind his right thigh. If there was going to be any form of a job interview later, he was fairly sure the usual chest subspaces would be subjected to a cursory search; he’d tossed in a packet of magnesium flakes and a cracked datapad with some risque images on it. All the better to keep up the pretense. 

He set a silent alarm on his door with two small magnetic clamps and pushed a microscopic camera right into the bottom corner of the slanted window joint. While he was here on Nelign, this room would be his base of operations, and if anyone was following him or thought to break in to find out more about Leftstep, Jazz would know. 

By the time he’d stepped outside, it had been at least one joor since the light cycle had begun. But the streets remained mostly clear, with the exception of a tired-looking minibot trundling around with a scruffy broom, slowly but determinedly clearing the road of empty cubes and other assorted litter. The thin gray face didn’t register on any of Jazz’s archives so the mech was at least not officer-level and above, and what better informant than an unwitting one? Jazz swung up beside him nonchalantly. “Hiya.”

The mech winced and didn’t pause in the slightest. “You’re loud.”

Jazz grinned, rueful and disarming, and took a calculated shot. “I just arrived last night. Haven’t found anyone I know, so I escaped the evening partying. Is it like that every day?”

A sniff answered him. “Depends on who your friends are.” There was a pause, before the mech looked up, squinting at him. “Where are you off to so early? Most places don’t open for another joor.”

“Ah,” Jazz beamed. “I was hoping you could point me in the direction of the command center. I saw some available jobs there, and I heard that was the best way to get started proper here.”

The mech eyed him sideways. “Right. Well. It is.” The sweeping hadn’t even slowed a beat. “But you’ve got some struts to be heading straight for the command center, don’t you?”

He let his visor flash in an innocent blink. “The job was as a courier-mech, it seemed easy enough? Is there...something wrong with being at the command center?”

His new acquaintance grunted. “Nothing wrong as long as you have inactive threat protocols, I suppose. Many big mechs there, newbie.” There was some hesitation, but it passed so quickly that if Jazz hadn’t felt it in the other’s field with his extended sensornet, he would have thought he’d imagined it. “And some of them are, well...bit madder than others. The usual.”

Jazz let his fingers twitch as if nervous and lowered his voice. “Is it really true that we’re not going to be fighting anymore? Is it really alright for us all to just be here? We’re- we’re _Decepticons_.”

If Jazz hadn’t already catalogued the broom coming up to thwack him on the leg as completely harmless, it would have been instinct to snap the mech’s arm before the ‘weapon’ made contact. As it was, he affected a loud “Ow!” and a small glare, leaning down to rub at the spot that had been hit. “What was that for?!”

The mech had already resumed sweeping. “Slagging right, it’s true. Soundwave wouldn’t lead us all wrong. If he says it’s fine for us to be here, it’s fine. Don’t you go getting any Pit-spawned ideas otherwise, you hear me?”

Jazz held up his hands in mock-surrender, letting a calculated wisp of relief color his field. “Alright, alright! Now can you tell me where I should go?”

He got another grunt, before the broom was stuck out to the far right of the street. “Turn that way and then go straight for three- ” scratched red optics flickered over Jazz again, considering his size, “-four breams. The Block will be on your left. Won’t be able to miss it.”

Jazz grinned with a tinge of sincerity this time. “Thanks, mech. Guess I’ll just be on my way then! Wouldn’t want to be beaten out by all the others lining up to carry, uh, whatever it is that needs carrying.”

He was rewarded with a short gruff chuckle before the mech turned dismissively away. “You do that, newbie.”

In the light of day, navigating the streets was even more interesting. The grid-like layout of the area called to mind an almost-military precision, but it was fairly spoiled by the mish-mash appearance of many of the structures between which more of the open recharge lots sprawled. It looked as though building materials had been repurposed as a general rule; uneven little establishments sat side by side, some looking more residential than others. It made sense that the Decepticons had not had much in the way of supplies after they’d left Cybertron. Whatever was here was probably the result of scavenging off whichever outposts they’d still had. 

Two other mechs passed by on the other side of the street, with the audible hum of their engines warming up. They were huge grounder frames, and both had sizable drill bits mounted on their arms. Jazz recalled the list of jobs scrolling on the screen yesterday. These had to be miners. What were they mining here? What had the Decepticons found? A fritz of anticipation formed in Jazz’s speculative unit, branching out to pull some power in for hypothesizing on which metals or minerals were most valuable to a newly-settled population. He shunted it easily to background processing as he moved onwards. He would have time to look into it later.

The row of buildings on the left suddenly stopped, and opened up into a large intersection. And then Jazz saw the command center, or the Block, as the mech had called it. He whistled under a vent.

Set a way back from everything else, it loomed impressively in its own square. Unlike most of the other buildings he’d seen so far, the walls looked solidly thick and had been raised to an exactingly equal height, tall enough to fit a gestalt. Speaking of gestalts...with the Constructicons far away back on Cybertron at Prowl’s beck and call, Jazz wondered who had stepped up to the figurative plate. He could see at least two external power stations flanking the Block, with enormous cables laid upon the ground and feeding into the structure. But what was odd was that there wasn’t a single guard in sight, no one keeping watch on such vital points. Were the Decepticons so confident that Nelign was safe territory?

As he got closer, he could hear a faint stomping from within. When he was five mechanometers away, the door suddenly slid open with a hiss and two beeps, and - his enhanced recognition programs scanned and ran the data through his archives in nanokliks - Lugnut stood there. He was frowning, bulky purple frame all but taking up the entire width of the entrance. 

Jazz staggered back in artful surprise. “Oh!”

Lugnut peered suspiciously at him. “Who are you?”

He knocked his hands together, gathering himself visibly. “I’m Leftstep, sir! Here about the courier job? I saw the posting on the main screen yesterday.”

Lugnut’s expression cleared after a frozen moment of disbelief. “Frag me, it worked! Now I’m going to have to let Strika do it to me- ” he muttered the last part quietly, but Jazz’s identifying programs alerted him anyway. Strika, the General of Destruction, was a densely-armored battle tank who had steamrolled the Autobots on several occasions, many of those times literally. If she was here, Jazz would need to keep a tab on her as well. 

“Well, come on in then, Leftstep. Maybe now that there’s an extra set of servos around, Rumble will stop trying to destroy my audials with his complaining, hmm? How can such a small bot have such a loud voice?” He stepped aside, and Jazz was pleasantly grateful for the visor that kept his surprise from showing.

“That’s- that’s it? You don’t need to interview me?”

Lugnut frowned at him again. “Interview? Why?”

Jazz’s strategic processes were flashing alerts at him that this had to be a trap. There was no way it could be this easy. “Don’t you need to make sure I have all my screws and bolts on right?” he tried daringly. “Or check what I did during the war? See if I’m right for this work, this place?”

Lugnut was looking at Jazz as though he’d suddenly transformed into a cog. “You’re a Decepticon.” As though that explained anything, or everything. “And you came here to Nelign when Soundwave put out the summons, right? So, doesn’t matter what you were doing before. And there’s no such thing if you’re right for a job or not, as long as you want to do it. Haven’t you listened to the speech? I’ve memorized the speech!”

Before Jazz could come up with an answer, he suddenly felt it behind him: the whip-snap crackle of a stinging and powerful EM field. It suffocated the air around them at the same time a tall shadow fell over him and Lugnut both. Jazz stilled himself and all his considerable battle impulses, watching instead as Lugnut’s face cycled through varying expressions of unease, grudging respect and then finally settled on awkwardly deferential, his helm bowing. “Galvatron.”

“Move aside,” Galvatron ordered darkly. Jazz loosed the tight hold he’d had on himself, letting his hydraulics bounce as he stumbled out of the way. Galvatron didn’t even spare him a second look, shoving Lugnut to the side when the mech moved too slowly out from the doorway. He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared, the huge cloud of unnatural energy crackling crisply in his wake. 

Lugnut scratched his helm and then gave a small vent. “Guess it’s your lucky day, Leftstep - you just got to see one of the big bosses. Actually, if I remember it right...I think they’re all in for a meeting today. Try not to get in the way, okay?”


	3. Chapter 3

The Block was as straightforwardly easy to navigate as its name suggested. From the entrance, a long corridor opened from left to right, through which other pathways extended deeper into the building. There were three closed doors that Jazz could see towards the left side; Lugnut beckoned him to the right instead, and they headed that way until they reached an open door, through which Jazz could already hear someone grumbling. Shrilly.

“Rumble!” Lugnut rapped on the side of the doorframe. “You’re not going to believe this, but I got something for you that you’re going to be grateful for!”

“Is it something that’s going to let me clone myself?!” came the irate shout. “Or are you volunteering to collect the reports from the mines today? If not, don’t even come in!”

Lugnut paused, and seemed to consider each statement seriously. “Nooo,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Nothing for cloning, Rumble. I don’t think Soundwave would allow that.” An exasperated snort answered him, and Lugnut faltered. “But this is Leftstep! He wants to work as the new courier!”

“What?!” something toppled in the middle of the room and Lugnut stepped away from the door, pulling Jazz up from behind him to stand in the entryway instead. “Lemme see him!”

A black and red frame popped up from the ground. Jazz looked down. And down. And down.

His recognition program prompted that Rumble was a cassette. Soundwave’s cassette. Jazz had seen the minibot on various battlefields, of course, but always from a distance and usually surrounded by fractured ground and destruction. And somehow, he’d looked larger from afar, when his arms were transformed into furiously-working piledrivers. Up close in root mode, he barely came up to Jazz’s hip, and Jazz was already considered a smaller mech by most standards.

“Hello,” Jazz said after a beat, when he realized that Rumble was staring skeptically up at him - or more specifically, running optics down his frame. “I’m Leftstep.”

“Are you a ground vehicle?” Rumble demanded.

The mech definitely made up for his small stature with his attitude, and Jazz almost smiled before he remembered himself. “Yeah I am,” he said modestly, dimming his visor. “Is that alright?”

“Yeeeeees!” Rumble cheered, pumping a fist into the air. “Finally getting my ride! Do you know how much time this is going to save me? We’re going to be awesome together!”

Lugnut beamed, ushering Jazz forward now that Rumble’s approval had been unabashedly given. “I’m leaving him to you then, shall I? I still got to, ah, run by Strika before her meeting.”

Rumble leaned sideways to look past Jazz, and gave an unmistakable leer at the lumbering mech. “Better start running then, big guy. Don’t want to make her late, do you?” With a raucous laugh, he slapped Jazz on the thigh, visor flashing up in a gleeful wink as he excitedly hissed, “Look, look, there he goes!”

Jazz didn’t have to turn around to hear that Lugnut was already noisily thumping down the hallway, back towards one of the closed doors he’d seen when he’d entered. He was remarkably fast for having such a heavy-duty boxy frame. Jazz made a quick note of it in his archives.

“So,” Rumble said offhandedly, wheeling about and diving right back into the stack of data pads in the middle of the room, “How long have you been here on Nelign, Leftstep? Is this your first job, or have you tried a few out?”

Jazz followed Rumble’s precarious path with some apprehension. “I got here last dark cycle,” he offered. “From the Helix outpost.” He wondered how prudent it would be to let slip his fortuitous meeting with Soundwave and say that it had been the Decepticon leader’s advice that had brought him here. It might be more suspicious if he avoided the topic since everyone had to know that Rumble was Soundwave’s cassette, and if Jazz remembered what Blaster had once offhandedly shared about his own cassettes, information from one was very readily passed on to the other. 

“This is my first job,” he continued smoothly. “Made it to Swindle’s bar when I landed, it seemed as good a place as any to start. Soundwave was really helpful, actually. He told me to look at the listings on the main screen, so I did and this one seemed- ”

Rumble emerged from the stack, looking thunderstruck. “You just got here and you’re working?” he asked in complete disbelief. “Frenzy and I held out for, like, almost a whole deca-cycle! But technically I won because he got sent to the communications block an entire breem before me,” he said smugly. Then the rest of what Jazz had said seemed to catch up, and he clapped, delighted. “You already made it to Alt Mood, huh? Gee, Leftstep, party vehicle! And you even talked to our Soundwave! Most mechs don’t approach him when he’s there, though I don’t know if that’s ‘cause he’s always giving off those tired vibes or if Swindle’s taking too much initiative to suck-up and keep everyone back. But if you didn’t let any of that stop you...” he grinned wickedly, though there seemed to be something contemplative behind the little red visor, “That was real nice of you, Leftstep.”

It didn’t seem appropriate now to mention that he’d had no intention of accosting Soundwave quite so quickly or directly, and that it’d been pure serendipity that had led things up to this point. Instead, Jazz settled himself gingerly on the floor next to what appeared to be Rumble’s main stack, and put on his most attentive expression. “Can you tell me more about what I’m supposed to do around here?” 

Rumble’s reply was distracted. “We collect reports from all over Nelign and bring them back here so Soundwave can analyze them. And then we bring whatever’s needed from here out to the others, too. These- ” small black servos gestured vaguely around them, “-have really piled up recently. Ah, you know how it is, things go well, mechs get into the spirit...even Onslaught has started fixing his numbers right, and isn’t that just mad?”

It sounded like whatever was going on here, the Decepticons had well and truly established a functional system in the last few stellar cycles. Jazz wondered what the likelihood of directly accessing some of the aforementioned reports was. He was fairly certain he could sneak one or a couple past Rumble, but the question was how quickly Soundwave would notice. With the latter’s reputation for precision and tightly-held control, it seemed somewhat obvious that a missing report would be discovered right away. Some careful onlooking was probably still wiser at this point, at least until such time as he knew enough about the way things worked around here to plug into a datapad for a couple of breems.

By Rumble’s reactions so far, it felt natural to continue fishing for more information along this line. “Are there many places we have to collect reports from?” he prompted, making sure to fill his field with a bit of trepidation. “It sounds like real hard work you’ve been doing all by yourself.”

Rumble wheezed a huffy-sounding laugh, and popped out again from behind the wall of datapads to give Jazz an appreciative look. “Thannnk you! Finally, someone who acknowledges how fragging difficult it is to be in like, ten places at once! There’s the two mines, of course, and then the comms center, and then the four business districts, and the school, and...uh, what did I miss? But now that I don’t have to hitch rides on whichever grounder happens to be outside, I think things will go much better, Leftstep. You and me are gonna go places like zap, whoo, bang!” He punctured each word with an enthusiastic wagging of a finger.

“That sounds like fun,” Jazz let his voice warm. “So what should I start doing? When do we leave?”

“Eh,” Rumble eyed the chaos in the room with some obvious reluctance. “We don’t collect the reports until the end of the light cycle. But, uh, we should probably sort some of this out. Soundwave’s been on me to do it, and I’ve been trying but it’s not my brand of wax, if you know what I’m saying. So maybe you can do it?” the red visor flickered hopefully. “I’ll tell you how.”

Jazz and administration had never gotten along particularly well. But how hard could it be? He dusted his hands off and plastered on a suitably helpful smile. “Yea, okay, sure.”

Two joors and three hundred and twenty-seven datapads later, he was regretting it immensely. His processor had dropped into mind-numbing automation. His frame was not made for tiptoeing repeatedly between narrow spaces in a small room, back and forth through piles of “Read and archived”, “Read but not archived”, “For forwarding” and “Wiped”. There was a small metal trolley on the desk marked “Latest”, but it was thankfully empty. Even the cables in his wrists felt like they were beginning to crimp. 

“Soundwave analyzes all of this by himself?” he couldn’t help asking, and he didn’t even have to feign the glyph of respect and mild amazement. “That must be a real Pit of a processor.” Perhaps even on a level with Prowl.

Rumble looked up from where he’d been perched on the table, noisily playing a game on a handheld console. “Well of course,” the cassette sounded almost affronted. “Soundwave does everything. How do you think we even found this planet? Who do you think made the Decepticons, like, a real plan? I can say that if it’d been up to that shady wreck from the Undead Universe, we’d all still be out there trying to chew the Autobots to death! Or fighting on some other lousy world that barely has a cube’s worth of energon. Nah, this is so much better. We don’t have to look behind us all the time, and there’s plenty of fuel, and we get to be free.” 

There it was again, that word. _Free_. What did that mean for the Decepticons, really? And what was that about a fuel source sufficient enough for all the mechs that had gathered on Nelign? 

If it were true, the implications were staggering. Jazz opened his mouth to ask more, but Rumble suddenly yelped and slammed his game console down. 

“Bolts! Speaking of fuel, I was supposed to fix cubes for Laserbeak and Buzzsaw today! Come on, Leftstep!”

A break from sorting? Thank Primus.

Jazz trailed behind as Rumble dashed into the main corridor, heading further onwards to the right and then rounding the corner at the end of the hallway so quickly he almost skidded. There was the sound of a door being flung open with gusto, and Jazz followed quickly, stepping after Rumble into a large, open pantry.

Recognition slammed to the fore as a frantically-blinking red alert onto his HUD, and his threat protocols fired up so swiftly to maximum levels that his weapons system almost came online. Jazz throttled it at the last second with a disabling command so rough that he had to grit his dentae and dismiss a glitch warning. 

Because reclining there casually on a large, comfortable looking couch, looking for all the world as if he was about to drop into a lazy afternoon recharge, was _Sixshot_.

Even sitting down, the Phase Sixer loomed over him. The white facemask was open under half-shuttered red optics, revealing smooth sharp planes and a mouth that was slightly twisted in inquisitive amusement. Beneath the wide turquoise chestplate, Jazz could hear the barest thrum of a powerful engine. It was another nanoklik before Jazz realized that Rumble had vaulted over one of Sixshot’s large pedes - almost the same height as Rumble himself - and beelined for the counter set along the wall behind the couch, chattering breezily to the six-changer all the while.

“-forgot that Soundwave said to do it since he was gonna be busy meeting you lot today, got distracted with - heh - cleaning up the backlog, and by the way, this here’s Leftstep, my new assistant!”

Sixshot was nodding agreeably at Rumble, murmuring something, and though the white helm didn’t move, Jazz felt the weight of that deadly gaze swing towards him. 

Sixshot was a part of the new Decepticon high command? As far as Jazz knew, the Phase Sixer had been in the thick of several notorious internal battles within the Decepticon troops. There had been the rumor of Starscream’s attempts to shut him down, and then a later association with Galvatron and the raving scientist Jhiaxus. A while after that, there’d been the seemingly-isolated incident of Sixshot stealing valuable research from an Autobot science base before being defeated by no less than the Metrotitan himself. Nothing had been heard about him after that, so the general consensus was that the fearsome Phase Sixer had either been mortally wounded or offlined at last. 

Yet here he was, lounging barely five mechanometers from Jazz and clearly fully functional.

“Leftstep? Do you also want a cube?” Rumble hollered.

He shook himself out of his musing and started after Rumble, moving around the massive pedes in front of him. Sixshot was still staring at him, optical illumination a thin and evaluating red line that sent a prickle over Jazz’s frame.

Then the Phase Sixer shifted minutely, pushing forward as if in an idyllic stretch. The small movement cycled across Jazz’s visual feed as if in slow motion: if he continued forward, the very corner of Sixshot’s pede would clip Jazz at the knee just as he passed by. His highly-tuned reflexes automatically leapt to compensate, hydraulics already tensing to release and twist him out of the way-

No, _no_ , that was the wrong move. It would give the game away. 

“Ack!” he let himself trip, falling over as his knee folded and landing in an unceremonious sprawl of limbs. He could hear Rumble running over and then beginning to laugh uproariously. “Aw, you got him, Six!”

“My apologies,” Sixshot’s voice was low and husky. A large hand was proffered in front of Jazz’s visor to help him up. “I often forget how much space I take up.”

He flashed his visor in a show of annoyance and embarrassment, but took the hand gingerly. It wrapped around his wrist securely. It was impossible to miss the sheer strength that pulled Jazz to his feet, as easily as though he weighed nothing.

“It’s fine,” he grumbled, dusting himself off. Rumble was still chortling, but offered a light pink cube from the top of the pile in his arms when Jazz made it to his side.

“This place here’s where the dispensers are, Leftstep. You can fuel whenever you need, as much as you need! But don’t leave a mess, ‘kay? Strika hates that, and you don’t want her after your aft. Anyway, stay here a bit while I run out with these real snappy! Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are already waiting outside,” he fretted. Before Jazz could get a word in, Rumble had already raced out of the room, juggling the cubes.

Leaving Jazz alone with Sixshot, who was still regarding him lazily. 

“You don’t need to be so awkward,” Sixshot exhaled after a moment, then waved to another smaller couch at the far end of the room. “Go sit and have your cube. Just- ” and a small smile curved over those white faceplates, completely innocent, “-pretend I’m not here.”

“Sixshot, _should_ not be here.”

Jazz whirled, cube clutched in his hand. He hadn’t even heard Soundwave arrive, but here he was, standing dark and graceful in the doorway, that modulated voice unmistakably...reproachful?

Sixshot groaned, letting his helm fall back to the couch. “Soundwave, you know I can’t listen to Galvatron going on for more than a joor. Does that ancient ever have anything new to say? There’s only so many times you can spell it out for him.”

“Sixshot, has had sufficient break,” came the prim response. “Request, return to meeting now.”

There was no doubt about it. Even in that monotone, Soundwave sounded distinctly as though he was speaking to an errant sparkling. Sixshot groaned again, then heaved himself to his feet in one smooth move. “Alright, alright. Only because you always ask so nicely, Soundwave. But if my audials need replacing later, I’m coming to you.”

Soundwave stood aside as Sixshot bent and fit himself through the door, then hesitated. Jazz watched as that polished red visor turned towards him, before Soundwave’s helm dipped in acknowledgement. “Leftstep.”

The smile that fought to break across Jazz’s faceplates felt disturbingly sincere. “Soundwave.” 

He’d only seen Soundwave in the shadows of the dimly-lit bar last night. Now, in the full light of the room, he unobtrusively took in the broad blue shoulders, the taper of that lithe waist, and the tops of those sinfully white thighs. Oh, but the communications specialist was simply too delectable for his own good. If only he wasn’t also the exceptionally clever and indecipherable new leader of the enemy faction that Jazz had been fighting for the last few million years.

They looked at each other for a nanoklik more, and then Soundwave turned in dismissal and followed Sixshot. 

Jazz belatedly realized that his frame had heated up by degrees, and opened his vents fractionally to subtly clear the warm air. He made his way towards the small couch, cracking open a corner of the cube as he did so. He was going to have to watch himself more carefully around Soundwave, it seemed. Telepathic skills or not, the mech was proving quite adept at distracting Jazz from the mission.


	4. Chapter 4

In the next deca-cycle, Jazz managed to establish a pattern. 

He reported to the Block at the start of each light cycle. When he had finally finished sorting, Rumble had taken some time out of his games and showed Jazz how to manage the archival system; the process was a simple-enough uploading of data that unfortunately didn’t leave him privy to any of the reports’ actual content, which meant some actual hacking would be in order if he wanted to read anything. He wiped datapads - an even more tedious process than the sorting had been - and stacked them in replacement trolleys for various locations. He and Rumble fueled in the pantry, where he unfortunately didn’t catch any further glimpses of Soundwave or the others who made up the current Decepticon high command. And then they went out, Jazz transforming into vehicle mode and Rumble securing himself comfortably on top, covering a route that took them past what felt like the entire planet.

First up was always Business District 1, the section of buildings on the left when they exited the Block. Rumble had gleefully dubbed it the “party zone” - it was where a handful of bars including Alt Mood were situated, and even had two dubiously-named entertainment establishments that Jazz would need to check out at some point. The section leader was Sweep Two, a large, pinch-faced and oddly-formal mech who reminded Jazz of Ultra Magnus. 

Then they’d drive on to the communications array on the outside of that, where Frenzy, Rumble’s twin, was stationed. On a good day, they’d spend a quick breem or two gossiping before going on their way. On one bad day, Jazz had waited outside for an entire joor as yelling and punches were exchanged in a sort of manic game, before Buzzsaw flew in from somewhere squawking furiously and beating around Rumble’s helm with his flapping wings until the latter gave up and indignantly sauntered back to Jazz, telltale scuffs all over his paint. 

This reinforced Jazz’s suspicion that the cassettes were connected across a private comms system or something akin to a shared spark bond - how else would Buzzsaw have known about the fracas? Which by extension would mean they were all connected to Soundwave. The question was the extent to which information was exchanged via this connection: did the cassettes function as additional optics and audials with live transmissions to Soundwave? Or was it less intrusive than that? It would certainly affect what Jazz could get away with when dealing with Rumble.

Then it was on towards the space port, the hospital, Business District 2, Business District 3 where Jazz’s rented quarters were located, the school - a school! Jazz was itching to break into it, just to see what manner of indoctrination or insidious research might be going on there - and then Business District 4. Mostly, Jazz would stop in front of the building and wait while Rumble ran in and collected the reports. The job was more suitable than he’d thought for hiding in plain sight; in his alt mode, and with Rumble a common sight on his roof, mechs moved around him without a second glance, talking freely and boisterously. 

The final stops before returning to the Block were the two enormous energon mines located some distance behind the command center. The first time Jazz had seen the size of them, he had almost braked to a halt in genuine surprise. It more than explained why the Decepticons had stopped their interstellar conquests of worlds that might offer some sustenance. ‘Barren’ had been an entirely inaccurate description. Could the energon detectors have been obscured by some other property of the planet?

He wondered how Soundwave had found out that Nelign had had such natural resources.

The mines were the only place that had a semblance of a security set-up. Further away from the rest of the settlement, it was probably more token than anything else, or perhaps a precaution for safety. Thick gates stopped Jazz from entering during their rounds; Rumble always had to scamper through and locate Onslaught from wherever the leader of the gestalt was at the moment. The cassette always returned more than a little dusty and grumpy, and then they’d head back to the Block where Jazz would drop Rumble off and be dismissed for the day. 

He figured out that Rumble always delivered the reports directly to Soundwave. So there was absolutely no possibility that any information on those datapads could be altered in any way, at least not before Soundwave had already accessed it. That was certainly one way to cut out the potentially fudging middle mech, the likes of which had plagued pre-revolution Cybertron when the Senate had had their own servos in everything.

It crossed Jazz’s mind that it meant that Soundwave must practically live in the Block. Jazz had tried arriving early twice with the vague excuse that his chronometer was taking time to adapt to the different light and dark cycles on Nelign, but both times, Rumble had already been in the administration room (although the small mech had been asleep on the desk), which meant that Soundwave was already there as well. Jazz didn’t know how long it took Soundwave to process the daily reports, but seeing as how they usually got back from their rounds only near the end of the light cycle, it stood to reason that Soundwave would spend at least the next few joors working.

Rumble had mentioned before that Soundwave was tired. Of course, he had to be. Jazz’s shoulders ached with sympathy - as much as he enjoyed moving in his alt mode, the rigors of their schedule was more exhausting than he’d anticipated. But at least he got to stretch out his cables with transformation and activity, while Soundwave was probably closeted up in a gloomy office the entire day. The idea of finding and breaking into Soundwave’s office - but only for the mission, of course - made Jazz grin.

He sent off his report to Prowl every night after a turn in the wash racks and before recharge. Jazz had only seen one other occupant on his floor in the hab-block so far, a dull-opticked maroon mech who trudged back to his apartment, two doors down, around the same time that Jazz left every day for the Block. He was keeping dark cycles then, probably working in the ‘party-zone’. Jazz resolved to find some opportunity for a casual conversation soon.

He hadn’t made it back to Alt Mood since that first day, opting to save his creds the way a half-sensible Decepticon with a fresh start to make would probably do. But now that he’d worked a full deca-cycle, he had the next light cycle off and his first pay had come in, an amount of credits that served better as a bartering tool rather than any real semblance of financial security. That was not necessarily a bad thing, from what Jazz had observed. Things didn’t cost a lot on Nelign, and credits seemed to be used as often as favors for payment. 

In any case, he’d been seen around fulfilling a function as one of them. It was as good a time as any to see if he couldn’t make some more connections that could open up some gates or give deeper intel. His first priority now was to gain access into the mines, to verify with his own optics the source of the Decepticons’ complete turnaround.

A whisper in his processor hoped that he might catch sight of Soundwave there again, though Rumble had let it slip offhandedly that it wasn’t every day that the Decepticon leader found the time to go. But if he was there, and if Jazz managed to engineer buying him a drink, would Soundwave slide that silver mask back and show him his face? The thought was unreasonably tempting, as much for the fact that Autobot intelligence had never once caught the mech with his figurative panels down as well as for other more...personal reasons that Jazz wasn’t inclined to examine too closely right now.

He knew it was illogical. Jazz should have been angling to avoid direct interaction as far as possible, relying instead on his forte of invisible espionage. He should not have been delighted at the prospect of baiting Soundwave face-to-face. And he should definitely not have been speculating and justifying how far he could conceivably go with the mech under the pretext of intelligence-gathering. The closer he got, the higher the probability would be that he would be discovered. 

He toyed with the thought of using Rumble. The cassette had seemed glad that he’d spoken to Soundwave.

Well, it was all hypothetical for tonight. 

Jazz shrugged his musing off and then checked his cover paint. He would probably have to touch it up soon, with supplies he had brought in his subspace; the grind of the daily report route and the harshness of the solvent were definitely taking a toll. But in the shadows of the dark cycle, it likely wouldn’t make a big difference.

He composed his usual quick report to Prowl, short and sharp, tagging a teasing glyph over the salary he had just received and a jibe on Autobot free labor in comparison. Jazz liked nothing better than to needle his ranking officer whenever he could, most of all when he was far away and safe from having a desk or two thrown at him. He doubted he would get anything more than the same acknowledgement ping in reply anyway. The lesser that was transmitted on an undercover operation, the better, and Prowl rarely saw fit to snip back on comms.

Four breems later, Jazz found himself outside Alt Mood, the same tinny music floating out through the open doorway. The lights of the area were as cosy as he remembered, imparting a dreamy quality to the darkness. The bar looked completely packed today, mechs squeezing in and out past each other with quite a few voices already raised in engex-fueled volume. A particularly loud olive-green mech rattling his way through the crowd looked familiar, and Jazz ran the small angular faceplate against his recognition system.

If it wasn’t Brawl. Jazz’s expansive archives threw up the information that the mech was one of the Combaticons who formed the Bruticus gestalt. Brawl was a large mech, powerfully and solidly built - and if that frame was wasted on anything but a turn in the mines, Jazz would paint himself pink. Here was a perfect opportunity, if he’d ever seen one.

He pressed himself into the crowd, trailing quickly after Brawl. His smaller supple frame twisted into the gaps between the large mechs easily, and then his bulky target was right in front of him. Jazz took a calculated misstep, and then threw himself directly against Brawl’s back, fingers fluttering.

Brawl growled and whirled around, only to be stopped short when Jazz smiled up, all coy embarrassment and stuttering ventilations as he murmured an apology. He let his hands linger for several nanokliks before pulling away quickly, as if suddenly realizing they were still on Brawl’s hips. Brawl’s jaw was hanging open as his optics roamed over the rest of Jazz’s frame, before he snapped it shut with an audible click.

“Thank you for catching me,” Jazz said demurely. He let the jostle of the crowd behind him push him closer into Brawl’s frame, so close he could smell the dust and sense the heat coming off. “I’d surely have been crushed otherwise.”

Brawl’s optics flared bright in interest. “Haven’t seen you around here before, pretty thing. Who are you here with?”

“Oh,” Jazz lowered his helm, as if self-conscious. “I’m quite new to Nelign. I haven’t found anyone I know yet, but I tried the drinks here when I arrived and they were quite...addictive.” He let his glossa swipe at his lips, as if remembering the taste. Brawl’s gaze tracked the movement with a widening grin.

“Well then, you must let me buy you one of those drinks.”

He let his visor flicker in surprise before settling into something almost coquettish. “Would you? I think I’d like that very much.”

Brawl proceeded to glare the first booth free from two mechs who were fortunately already mostly done. Then he nudged Jazz into it, one hand already forwardly clamping down on Jazz’s own where he’d left it on the table on purpose. “Any favorites?”

Jazz allowed a flirtatious chuckle to bubble up. “I’ll take what you recommend.” How lovely, he wouldn’t even have to spend his own credits. Especially if what was coming was going to be as vile and potent as what he’d tried before. Perhaps some Decepticons had their intakes or glossa wired differently? That theory could bear some creative checking out.

Brawl returned with a Circuit Breaker for Jazz and two Shattered Sparks for himself, squeezing his thick frame into the seat opposite Jazz. He was so wide that his knees bracketed Jazz’s under the table. Jazz shifted smoothly within the confines, briefly sliding the outside of his thighs against the inside of Brawl’s, and watched as a smirk appeared on the Decepticon’s face. Pretending to ignore him, Jazz eyed the deep pink liquid with no small amount of internal trepidation instead, before lifting the cube and taking a sip.

It was as viscous and cloyingly sweet as its appearance suggested. Decepticon cocktails, 3 - Jazz, 0. 

“So what do you do here on Nelign?” he asked Brawl brightly instead, setting the cube down nonchalantly and letting one hand wander the table in slow, inviting swirls. Brawl’s gaze dropped to the action as if hypnotized, and when the Combaticon answered, he sounded more than a little distracted. 

“Big mech like me? I work in the mines, pretty thing.” 

Right on the shanix.

Brawl was talking fairly loudly; Jazz dialed back the receptors on his audials while letting his visor glow winsomely and his voice lilt in breathy admiration. “The mines! I’ve only seen them from afar. Are they as amazing as everyone says?” 

Brawl nodded, optics snapping up to greedily drink in Jazz’s impressed expression. “Fragging right they are. The walls are so full of energon crystals that we’ve only had to go down three hundred mechanometers in the big one and a hundred and seventy in the other so far. The rest of the time we’re working double on the refining, and that’s been a never-ending task.”

Three hundred mechanometers? For sustaining the entire Decepticon army? Were the walls _made_ of energon crystals? Jazz pulsed the illumination in his visor playfully and lowered his voice. “That sounds incredible! It must be true that the mining jobs are so important that only the strongest Decepticons are selected for it?”

Brawl guffawed, knocking back the first of his drinks. “For sure! Sweet little mech like you? Wouldn’t get past the front gates. Onslaught doesn’t let anyone who can’t carry at least twice their weight in there.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially to match Jazz’s. “I have no problems carrying _four_ times my weight.” 

Jazz let his lips part slightly, as though in astonishment. He deliberately swept his visor over Brawl’s frame, consideringly. Then he smiled at him, filling his field with a simpering enrapturement. “I can definitely believe that. You must be one of the strongest. I do wish I could observe you at work.” He trailed off and looked to the side, slumping visibly and letting one hand curl up to the curve of his neck, giving the exposed cables there a delicate rub. “But like you said, I’ll probably never even get a chance to see the mines…”

Brawl’s optics followed Jazz’s fingers as the Combaticon tipped his second cube up and finished it in one large gulp. “You…” he started, and Jazz could practically hear it beginning, the overbright charge of the potent fuel hitting Brawl’s tanks and sizzling through circuitry. “You- really wanna see it?”

He tilted back towards the larger mech, and didn’t even have to force the slow smile spreading across his face this time. “I’d _love_ to see it.”


	5. Chapter 5

His off cycle over, Jazz returned promptly to the Block, only to be greeted with a surprisingly empty office.

“Rumble?” he asked, making a full round to make sure the cassette wasn’t asleep behind some nook or cranny. The precariously wobbling stacks that had furnished the room were gone since the time he’d managed to finish sorting them, but the datapads themselves had merely been rearranged into their respective trolleys, most of which stood near-full. They’d probably have to drop the wiped ones to several locations today...including the mines.

Jazz bit back the very unbecoming grin at the memory of his illicit entry. 

Brawl hadn’t been able to leave Alt Mood fast enough when Jazz had suggested that _certain_ activities would be more thrilling in prohibited areas. He’d kept just out of arm’s reach in front of the Combaticon every step of the way, swinging his hips and pulsing the glow in his visor suggestively. It had been a fairly long walk; Jazz had had to tease a lot more than he usually had patience for, granting sloppy kisses on his intake and claws raking over the seams of his arms and back just to keep his suitor perched on the unthinking side of drunken lust. By the time they had arrived at the locked gate, it’d taken Brawl three tries to punch in his access code - Jazz had playfully pretended to cover his visor while committing the glyphs to memory. 

They had made it in eventually, and then Brawl had yanked him towards the entrance of the smaller mine. They’d passed a group of night shift mechs who looked like they were on a break, huddled in a loose circle and playing a dice game, laughter and bits of amiable chatter drifting over. One of them had frowned when he saw Jazz and then threw Brawl a dirty look, but didn’t say anything. Someone else whistled lewdly. 

As soon as they’d ducked out of sight, Brawl boxing him in against a wall and groping him messily, Jazz had pulled the larger mech down and kissed him. Had triggered the microscopic compartment under his glossa with a flick and pressed the weaponized sedative down Brawl’s intake, where it dissolved within nanokliks. It contained a clever little bit of coding that went straight for the processor, initiating a shutdown sequence. The Combaticon had all but collapsed, dropping abruptly into a light stasis with his mouth still open and drooling slightly over himself. 

The best part about the aftereffects was that Brawl would wake up feeling as if he’d simply shorted out from a massive overcharge. Being known for a processor-blanking good time was something that had saved Jazz’s cover on more than one occasion.

He’d turned around finally to get a proper look.

This close to the surface, the area had been thoroughly mined. Even so, flecks of purple-pink crystals still remained, dusted through the stone like an endless smattering of stars. It looked like Jazz hadn’t been far wrong when he’d wondered if the mines were built almost entirely out of energon crystals. Judging from the reactions of the night mech who’d spotted them, he’d have at least one breem, if not two, before they were interrupted. He’d transformed silently and kept to the shadows, before revving his engines noiselessly and heading deeper in at speed.

One hundred and seventy mechanometers down, the expanse of the route felt almost as wide. There were three rows of tracks that had been built into the ground, and the width of them implied carts the size of which would probably fit two of Jazz, with room to spare. The further he’d gone, the brighter and larger those purple-pink specks in the walls and ground had become, and soon his wheels had been skidding over actual crystals, rough edges and chunks that hadn’t yet been pulled free. 

And then he’d reached the point where the digging had stopped, and fought the urge not to whistle.

It’d looked like something out of a glittering fantasy, a richness that Jazz suddenly realized he had never, ever seen - not even in the days before the war had begun. Crystals - some as large as his torso - were suspended in the walls, and they were so many that his entire visual feed seemed to sparkle as he snapped several dozen images in quick succession, turning in a full circle to encompass the entire area. How far did it go? How much more of the planet was full of this precious fuel? If the Autobots had established themselves first on Nelign, to what extent could they already have revived Cybertron with such abundant supplies? He fished a small fragment up from the ground, and tucked it into his subspace.

His chronometer pinged then: no more time for dawdling. Transforming hastily, he’d raced back towards the surface and arrived not a moment too soon - footsteps and low grumbles were already making their way back towards where he had left Brawl sprawled on the ground. With a basic hardline and the flimsiest of illegal overrides that would all but escape detection just in case Brawl ended up in a medbay, he’d hacked the Combaticon’s memory banks and triggered a small corruption of Brawl’s recent archives. It would better serve the illusion of a serious overcharge and conveniently also blur Brawl’s memory of Jazz. He’d unplugged and stood up just in time to see the mech who’d glared at Brawl on their way in.

Jazz had affected a wobble in his step and some fitful spots of illumination in his visor, as though he were also overcharged and recovering from overload. The other mech had looked between them, clearly suspicious that Brawl was unconscious, and Jazz had been forced to think quickly, stumbling forward and flinging his hand over his mouth as though he were about to retch.

“No, no, no, not here!” the mech had growled, instantly shoving him outside. “I am not cleaning up after afts who can’t hold their engex again. Get out!”

And just like that, Jazz had escaped. 

It appeared that security had become lax in many more ways than it had been during the war. It stood to reason that the overall air of relaxation on Nelign had something to do with that, although Jazz still found it almost impossible to believe.

After heading back, he’d spent the entirety of his off cycle carefully redoing his gray paint in the privacy of his rented room, checking his weapons inventory and performing a thorough maintenance on his knives and blasters. He’d replenished the sedative he’d used and ran coding checks through his reinforced firewalls, erecting partitions between all of the new data he had been gathering, and instituting a full defragmentation on his archives. Then he’d sent Prowl several of the images he’d captured of the mine. Testing the small sample he had filched would have required some materials he didn’t have with him; he’d have to keep an eye out to see if he could grab the components for a crude refining process, but if the look of the crystal was anything to go by, it was far higher quality than anything Jazz had seen in vorns. 

A single rap at the door jerked him out of his musing. When he looked up, it took all of Jazz’s considerable self-control not to let his engine stutter at the unexpected visitor.

“Soundwave,” he greeted carefully, coming out from behind the desk, processor racing. “Can I help you with something?” He hadn’t heard the mech coming at all. Jazz’s audials were more sensitive than most, but Soundwave’s frame and systems seemed to run just as silently as Jazz's own. 

That red visor regarded him for a long moment without speaking, and the wild thought that he had been discovered crossed Jazz’s processor. He leaned against the desk, one hand dropping casually to the subspace in his thigh where he kept a short-range blaster, waiting. Behind the safety of his own visor, he looked over the taller mech quickly, cataloging weaknesses in transformation seams and places where plating might be thinner. 

Though now that he was looking carefully and from up close, Soundwave’s armor actually seemed a little lackluster, and his frame was slightly slumped. It was almost as if he was...

“Rumble, has cycle off.” 

Jazz blinked.

Soundwave’s hand was still resting on the open door where he had knocked earlier, curled in a loose grip. He was holding himself as straight as he could, but the edges of a tightly-held EM field flickered. Jazz frowned inwardly, but Soundwave was continuing to speak.

“Rumble, brought Leftstep’s schedule to attention. Requested one free cycle also. Rumble, has not had free cycle since beginning this work. Request, granted to be fair. Leftstep, to be accompanied by Laserbeak today instead.” He raised his other hand to his chassis, clearly preparing to disengage it, presumably to let the aforementioned cassette out.

Even through the usual monotone, something felt different. Jazz abruptly realized his earlier conjecture had been correct, and his hand slipped down from its careful position on his thigh, blaster forgotten.

That flat EM field. The slow actions. Soundwave was _exhausted_.

Jazz knew he should really be keeping his head down, figuring out some way to use this opportunity to plug into a datapad or two while Rumble was absent. But slag it all - Jazz was unbearably _curious_ , and he never knew when he would get Soundwave alone again.

“When was the last time _you_ had a free cycle?” he asked, as innocent a question as he could make it. Surely it was fine for Leftstep to act a fraction more familiar now with the mech who was technically his main employer.

Soundwave looked at him for a long klik, the motion to open his chassis momentarily halted. This time, Jazz recognized the gaze as tiredly appraising rather than suspicious. He arranged his expression carefully into one of nonchalant interest. 

“Soundwave, does not require free cycles,” came the clipped reply in the end. “Much work to be done every day.”

Jazz crossed his arms over his chest, considering if he should just leave it at that. But it was as though a data ghost had taken over his self-regulatory protocols and decided to push for broke. “So...everyone gets time off except you?” he asked casually. “Have you even fueled today? You look terrible.”

There was a stunned silence, and Jazz dared to raise his visor to Soundwave’s, making a pointed effort not to look as though he was checking the other mech out again. He had a feeling that a joke or a wrong glance now would raise an unbridgeable wall - and possibly get him fired, right as he was settling into this perfect cover. But he couldn’t take his impulsive comments back, and the part of him that craved the brush with danger also waited, feral and eager, to see how Soundwave would respond. Would he be able to reel Soundwave in?

“Soundwave, will fuel soon.” And Jazz _knew_ he was not imagining the frosty and slightly indignant inflection in that normally-expressionless voice. He almost laughed, triumph and delight at having gotten the reaction twisting giddily in him.

“Just sit here for a second,” he said briskly, once he’d tamped down the urge to smile. He darted out past Soundwave before the larger mech could disagree, heading straight for the pantry. “I’ll get you a cube.”

Jazz trotted briskly towards his destination. The door was closed; likely no one had gone in to fuel for the day yet. It was apparently unusual to take fuel at the beginning rather than the middle of a cycle around here, with most Decepticons starting their work only when the light cycle was well and truly underway. But Rumble _had_ said he was free to use the dispensary whenever he needed. He pushed the door open, and came to an abrupt halt.

Galvatron was sitting there, helm pressed close to a large, light gray mech’s whose broad sweeping purple wings took up almost the whole of the large couch. Even with a significant amount of his mass displaced, Jazz identified the Decepticon instantly. It was Astrotrain.

The triple-changer had jerked back when the door slid open, a flash of panic crossing his face. In contrast, Galvatron leaned back deliberately slowly, glaring red optics pressed onto Jazz. 

Either Jazz had walked in on something very cosy, or there was something unsanctioned going on. By the expression on Astrotrain’s face now and the nervous juddering of the larger mech’s leg, Jazz was willing to bet it was the latter.

But Leftstep was not so clever as to read any of that. He was, however, dumb enough that he wouldn’t scramble away and just leave, because where was the fun in that?

“Good day!” Jazz greeted breathlessly, all but stumbling forward, injecting the appropriate awe that was surely owed the sight of two of the most fearsome Decepticon warriors in the entire army. “Wow, it’s- it’s such an honor to see you again, Galvatron. Do you remember me? And...are you...are you _the_ Astrotrain? I’ve only seen you in battle from a distance.” He let his visor rake down the massive frame and flare in admiration. 

Astrotrain had relaxed from the moment he’d started babbling, no doubt pegging Jazz for a particularly starstruck and low-ranked Decepticon. Galvatron, however, was still glaring at him. 

“You. You were with Lugnut the other day.”

Jazz beamed at him guilelessly. “You do remember me! Yes, that was my first day of work! I’m so happy I get to be here,” and he bounced eagerly over to the dispensaries, plucking an empty cube from the shelf. “Having all the fuel a mech can drink is _wonderful_. This is all thanks to all of you!” He leaned down to fill the cube, as if completely unaware that he’d put his aft in the air. When he turned around, Astrotrain’s optics had darkened. Now that was an avenue that Jazz could pursue next time.

“May I refill your cubes for you while I’m here?” he asked belatedly, as if he had been so caught up in the thrill of meeting them that he’d completely forgotten how to be deferential. “I- I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important?” He gazed worshipfully between them, flickering the light on his visor. Astrotrain puffed up, but Galvatron cut in, sharp and irritated.

“No. Take your cube and leave us.”

Jazz let his refurbished finials droop in disappointment but did as ordered, casting one last longing glance back at them before moving in a show of reluctance through the door. The moment he was out of sight, however, the spring returned to his step. 

He headed quickly back towards his office, speculation already thrumming restlessly in his processor. That had been a guilty look on Astrotrain’s face, no doubt about it. It seemed like not all the cogs were aligned here in the new Decepticon high command after all. If something was afoot, then Jazz would find out what it was.

He sailed back into his room, and then, ridiculously, almost dropped the cube.

Soundwave was still there. 

Just as walking in on Galvatron and Astrotrain’s conspiratorial moment had entirely sidetracked him, now the sight of Soundwave - visor dimmed and leaning stiffly against the desk - pushed all thoughts of what had occurred in the pantry out of his main processing unit. There was something arrestingly gravitational about being this close to Soundwave. His presence crowded out Jazz’s sensors, pushing everything else to the background of Jazz’s considerable multitasking ability.

If this was a component of Soundwave’s telepathic skills, then Jazz had to find a way, fast, to become immune to it. It was already doing very compromising things to Jazz’s threat assessment protocols, namely rerouting the proximity warnings tagged to Soundwave’s ID and unreasonably classifying the deadly mech in front of him as something...something very tired that needed caring for.

As if Jazz had ever found himself in possession of something as unhelpful as a _nursing_ module. Spec Ops and any form of nurturing did not go together.

He gave his helm a small shake and proffered the fuel. When Soundwave simply stared at him, it suddenly crossed Jazz’s processor that he was standing there as if he was expecting Soundwave to blindly trust that the fuel he’d brought was untainted. As if Soundwave would just slide back his face-mask and reveal to Jazz what millions had never seen in as many years. In his assumed identity as a Decepticon foot soldier, the presumptuousness would almost be absurd.

Jazz never did embarrassed. Never. So he placed the cube down on the table right beside Soundwave instead and then stepped around him to take a seat behind the desk. Soundwave turned subtly with him as he moved, keeping him in sight like any highly-trained and battle-ready mech would do. One never quite forgot the unpleasant sensation of taking a blaster shot from behind.

No, Soundwave most definitely did not require coddling. Jazz was not equipped for coddling. Jazz was not even _thinking_ of coddling. Anything or anyone.

A soft rustle of wings from above him made him tense imperceptibly. Laserbeak. Of course. Soundwave must have released Laserbeak while Jazz had stepped out. Would it still be possible to access a datapad while under the cassette’s watch? He had never been this close to Laserbeak, and her personality would have to be observed before he made any moves. 

Then Soundwave’s long fingers reached out to take the cube, and Jazz’s visor snapped up to the other mech before he could stop himself. He pushed down the automatic disappointment; Soundwave’s face-mask was still firmly in place. But there was a small glimmer of red light hesitantly brightening above it that made Jazz’s spark do a funny spin in his chest.

“Gesture, appreciated,” Soundwave said at last. “Laserbeak, will stay with Leftstep now.”

He turned and exited without another word. Jazz squared his shoulders and ruthlessly quashed the distracting impulse to follow. There was another flutter of wing beats and then Laserbeak drifted down from where she’d been perched on a beam, landing gracefully atop a stack of wiped datapads.

“Right,” Jazz said, more to himself. “Time to get to work.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squeezing in one last update for the year! Hope 2021 brings better things for all :)

In the end, Laserbeak was so much more stealthy and quietly watchful compared to Rumble that Jazz decided it wasn’t the risk, and simply did Leftstep’s job as best as he knew how. He loaded up the trolleys of blank datapads into his compartments before transforming, and instead of riding up top whooping like Rumble liked to do, Laserbeak settled lightly on his windowsill, trilling as if politely inquiring before cautiously creeping into his passenger seat. If Jazz hadn’t known Laserbeak from all the times the cassette had soared menacingly overhead in the sky and zipped through hidden Autobot bases, sending top-secret intelligence back to the enemy and cleverly sabotaging crucial cables or hardware - even landing some downright vicious attacks on not a small number of unsuspecting mechs - he might almost have been...charmed. 

They didn’t linger at any of their stops either. Between flying off to the various section leaders and returning swiftly with the requisite reports, then laying them carefully in the marked box in his backseat, Laserbeak fluffed her feathers out periodically as if she were restless, turning her head back towards the direction from where they had started while waiting for Jazz to unload the wiped datapads to whichever grunt was nearby or on guard duty. 

They were so efficient that they returned to the Block almost three-quarters of a joor earlier than his normal schedule with Rumble. He partially transformed and took hold of the box before it could spill its contents, and then unfolded all the way to root mode, stretching out his struts. It was truly fortuitous that he had found a cover that allowed him to use his alt mode every cycle - Jazz could remember several undercover assignments previously that had made it particularly difficult for him to transform. Those missions had always left an itch crawling up his cables after a while.

Laserbeak was already headed towards the entrance, but she slowed and circled back just as the doors opened, chirping at him. She sounded slightly impatient, and Jazz had to bite back a grin. As much as working with Rumble was better for hearing the latest gossip around Nelign, there was something rather restful about having a quiet companion for a change.

Rumble usually delivered the reports to Soundwave directly after they came back, but Laserbeak’s frame was not made for carrying boxes, which meant that this would hopefully be Jazz’s chance to finally get a look at Soundwave’s office. Anticipation curled in his processor, quickening his step as he followed Laserbeak into the building and turned left instead of right for the first time.

Then Laserbeak let out a surprised chirp, and Jazz abruptly sensed the edges of an immense EM field. He had just enough presence of mind to tighten his grip on the box of datapads and slow down right before his momentum carried him round the corner and he collided into the immovable surface that was Astrotrain, casually leaning against the wall.

“You,” and it took a nanoklik for Jazz to realize that Astrotrain had turned his head and was addressing Laserbeak instead of him with a vague wave of a large white servo. “You just go ahead to wherever you have to get to, won’t you? I’d like a...private moment with this good-looking courier.”

Laserbeak was flapping her wings ahead of them in the corridor, cocking her little helm at them and trilling in a distinctly disagreeable way. Astrotrain slid that large hand down firmly onto Jazz’s shoulder and grinned at him before directing a loaded stare back in Laserbeak’s direction. “It’s _personal_ ,” he called out meaningfully. “So go back to Soundwave if you want to tattle and tell him this is none of his business. I won’t do anything. Nothing that this lovely mech doesn’t want me to at least,” and now the grin was morphing more obviously into a bit of a leer. “Shoo, shoo. I’ll let him follow in a bit, alright?”

Laserbeak tittered at Astrotrain again, louder and vaguely distressed. Then she turned and swooped down the corridor, and Astrotrain took that moment to steer Jazz back around the corner again so that they weren’t in view. Jazz’s processor wheeled through a dozen different scenarios and he clutched the box tighter with one arm, leaving his other hand free in case a quick escape became necessary. 

But Astrotrain was still smiling down at him, almost distractedly. If this was about Jazz’s earlier display in the pantry…

“Astrotrain,” he smiled back, blending reverence and a tinge of bashfulness together. “Were you waiting for me?”

Astrotrain’s optics flickered to the datapads in the box despite his best efforts to be subtle. Ah.

So that was what it was.

Jazz pressed himself further into Astrotrain’s grip, sliding the box lower and to the side, onto his hip. The larger mech looked back at him, attention captured again. “So you think I’m good-looking, huh?” Jazz let his smile turn flirtatious. “You don’t even know my name.”

Astrotrain chuckled, then made a show of looking over Jazz’s frame. “I might have a thing for the small ones,” the triple-changer said vaguely, then coughed in a rather poor attempt to be natural. “Those are today’s reports huh?”

Jazz had no reason to stop Astrotrain from accessing any of the reports. In fact, doing so might even prompt Astrotrain to clue him in to whatever it was that Galvatron was up to, or give Jazz more information as to what the Decepticons were doing here on Nelign. He raked his visor up and down Astrotrain’s chassis thoughtfully, flash-reviewing what he knew of the other mech. Astrotrain wasn’t exactly known for being discreet. All Jazz had to do was cooperate, and he would probably be able to get Astrotrain to reveal what he was privy to. Namely, if certain members of Decepticon High Command had any intention to go back to Cybertron or launch an attack. 

It was an exceptional opportunity, marred only by the lingering image Jazz had of Soundwave’s dim visor and the dullness of his armor. Because Soundwave had clearly been working himself down to his very struts, and even loud, rambunctious Rumble hadn’t had a cycle off until today. If Jazz put everything he had observed together, it would appear that Soundwave was doing everything almost single-handedly to keep the Decepticons afloat in a semblance of order on this planet, and whatever Galvatron and Astrotrain were doing or thinking was clearly not sanctioned, since Laserbeak had been chased away. 

He remembered those long fingers reaching out and taking the cube. That low, fatigued voice that had thanked him in not so many words. Almost as if Jazz was, somehow, _trusted_. A laughable notion. 

He’d made his decision even before he realized it.

Quick as lightning, Jazz triggered open the largest subspace in his chest, sliding in the box of datapads before Astrotrain could say another word. Forestalling the look of thwarted displeasure that was surely a vent away, Jazz stretched up on tiptoe, running both hands lightly across the larger mech’s hip plating as if that had been the purpose of him putting the reports away. “I may be small,” he murmured, letting his fingers slide teasingly over the larger seams, suggestively close to where thighs met torso, “But I think you’ll find me quite a handful anyway.” The gap between one particular seam was promisingly large. If he could nick the main hydraulic line underneath the joint, it would buy Jazz several kliks for a passably ‘accidental’ injury, inconveniencing Astrotrain without crippling him.

The scowl that had darkened Astrotrain’s faceplates froze in a comical twist, torn between nervous annoyance and budding lust. “What- you- ” The large hand was still grasping his shoulder, and now Jazz could feel the unpleasant power behind it, squeezing him indecisively. If this turned violent, face-to-face when Astrotrain already had him in a hold, Jazz would almost certainly not be able to extricate himself without fuss, if at all. His considerable skills lay in taking an enemy by surprise and in subterfuge, not in straightforward battle with an opponent several times his size. His tactical protocols were surging, imperatives scrambling over each other for priority. How exactly was he going to remove himself from this situation without getting into it with Astrotrain, without giving up the datapads and keeping his cover intact at the same time?

“Astrotrain. Surely you know better than to fraternize in the main entryway.” 

It was the most unlikely savior that Jazz could have imagined, and his fingers twitched on Astrotrain’s plating in honest surprise. The triple-changer had gone as stiff as a board, but he had also released Jazz immediately as though to deny the thinly-leveled accusation. Jazz vented once shallowly, resisted the urge to check his shoulder for dents, and then popped his head out to look behind Astrotrain. 

Sixshot loomed, arms crossed, expression both bored and unamused. Red optics flicked down and took Jazz in without comment. Astrotrain turned, faceplates smoothed into a blank, but this close, Jazz could feel his field leaking - the triple-changer was annoyed, anxious, and dosed through all of that was a liberal serving of dread. For all the advantage that Astrotrain had in bulk - even with his mass displacement - Sixshot’s destructive ability was probably still far higher. And the Phase Sixer did not seem pleased at all right now.

“At least take the mech out for drinks if you want some fun,” Sixshot said finally. “I won’t say anything about this, but don’t let me catch you doing it again.”

Astrotrain grimaced, then inexplicably brightened. “Right! We’ll just be on our way then- ” he seized Jazz again by the shoulder, all but pushing him towards the door.

“Hold up.”

Sixshot was coming closer, and Astrotrain stiffened again, whirling immediately so that his back wasn’t to the Phase Sixer. It had the effect of placing Jazz squarely between them, and Sixshot peered down at him, an unreadable expression on his face. 

“You’re Rumble’s assistant. Leftstep, was it? You collect the daily reports, don’t you?”

Astrotrain’s fingers tightened on Jazz’s plating, and Jazz couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw the ghost of a smile pull at the corner of Sixshot’s mouth even though the Phase Sixer didn’t shift his glance to the painful grip now all but mangling Jazz’s shoulder. Jazz nodded.

“Seeing as how Soundwave was suddenly pulled into a meeting with Galvatron a breem ago, I’ll just be taking those reports for him before you go.” In one smooth motion, Sixshot had dropped down to his haunches so that he was nearer eye-level to Jazz. He held out a hand expectantly.

There was a subsonic growl of frustration rising from somewhere under Astrotrain’s chassis. Jazz swiftly unsubspaced the box of datapads, then hurriedly placed it on Sixshot’s open palm. “Yes, sorry,” it wasn’t too hard to do a credible imitation of a babble. “It slipped my mind when Astrotrain caught me. I don’t usually deliver these myself.”

Sixshot did smile this time. It didn’t reach his optics. “Astrotrain the charmer? Now that’s something I’ve yet to see.” He angled his helm upwards and caught Astrotrain’s gaze, and when he addressed the triple-changer his tone was mild. “Don’t play too hard with this one, ‘Train. We still need him to work here.” He rose fluidly, box safely in hand, and then turned and left.

As soon as Sixshot was out of hearing range, Astrotrain turned on him with a glower. “You! This is all your- your- ” he stuttered as Jazz pressed himself back against his thigh.

Jazz turned up the illumination in his visor, dimming and brightening it invitingly in waves. “Now that work is done,” he said breathily, “May I buy _you_ a drink? I want to hear all about your exploits. You’re the pride of the Decepticons, I- I would be truly honored.” No need to act as though Leftstep thought the last two breems had been anything other than that Sixshot innocuously interrupting an equally innocuous if unprofessional interaction. And perhaps Jazz would still be able to wheedle information out of Astrotrain with some engex.

Astrotrain shut his jaw with a clack, annoyance warring with flattered ego. He took in the adoring, respectful look that Jazz had carefully plastered on his faceplates. 

Ego won out.

“Two drinks at least,” he finally huffed. “For the trouble you’ve given me.”

Instead of heading to Alt Mood, they ended up at a much larger, sprawling bar two streets away. Beyond the obvious of the locale having the required space for a mech of Astrotrain’s size, the other reason became clear once Jazz had picked up the menu datapad - the prices here were at least twice as much as those in Alt Mood. It was still early in the cycle, and there was no one around except for them. If not for the subtle music playing in the background, Jazz would almost have assumed the place was closed.

Well, the first rule in the book was to take what was apparent and turn it back on the target. Jazz made an obvious show of amazement at the fine decor - and it was fine, for the planet’s standards: heavy mesh curtains draped between each booth for privacy, crookedly-folded metalworks sitting as somewhat-artistic centerpieces on each table, a raised platform in the middle of the bar that had been relentlessly polished for the few large dents on it. He turned his visor back towards Astrotrain in admiration. “This is such a fancy bar, Astrotrain,” he murmured. “I would never have been able to get in here by myself. Do all the higher-ups come here?”

Astrotrain flashed his fangs in a satisfied smirk. “Not every damn bot gets access, that’s for sure. You gotta be, like, _important_.” He swiped the menu from Jazz’s fingers, red optics zeroing in on the corner where the thrice- and quadruple-distilled engex options were listed. 

“Oh, I don’t think there are many who could be more important than you,” Jazz offered, adding a touch of wistfulness to his tone. “Aren’t you the right-hand man to Soundwave and Galvatron?”

Astrotrain looked up with a grimace halfway through punching in his order, hesitating only a little before leaning forward with a hushed, conspiratorial air. “You don’t want to be saying those names together in the Block, little guy. Don’t you know anything?”

He cocked his helm, pursing his lips dumbly. “I- no? Do they not...get along?”

Astrotrain snorted and shook his head, letting the menu drop to the table. “Let me ask you then. What do you think of this planet?”

Jazz wondered what exactly this was leading up to. He shrugged, nonplussed, and decided to go with an honest if vague impression. “It’s...peaceful? Quiet?”

“Exactly!” Astrotrain jabbed at the table with a large finger. “It’s _boring_ , deathly boring! There are no victories to be had, no silly Autobots to trample. We should be out there, using all the resources we’ve found here to take back Cybertron and to bend those waffling traitors and NAILS to our will!”

The automatic nods that Jazz found himself making as Astrotrain spoke with increasing vigor were not entirely feigned. _This_ was much more like the typical Decepticon rhetoric he was used to - full of galactic ambition with screeching undertones of discontent. 

“We should be raising the Decepticon flag over new planets and expanding our empire,” Astrotrain continued, frowning and sitting back. “Instead, we’re parking ourselves secretly here like cowards. Hiding away for no good reason and not doing anything of purpose!”

Jazz thought of Starscream running Cybertron, building housing allotments for neutrals and veterans of both factions. Of Megatron aboard The Lost Light, drinking Fool’s energon, surrounded by former enemies and managing not to kill anyone (at least that they’d heard of). Of Soundwave and Rumble, running themselves ragged so that mechs could play dice games and open bars and sweet shops.

“Isn’t everyone just moving on?” he asked innocently. “Mostly everyone I’ve seen seems happy to be here and, well. Not fighting.”

“That’s just it!” Astrotrain leaned forward again, pounding down one sizable fist. “Those processor-damaged fools have been led into the illusion that Soundwave created - that there’s no need to fight anymore, that we can live here together like one big happy family and have- ” and there was a full body judder of metal punctuating the next words, “- _productive jobs_. What greater reward is there than domination and power? Why should we work when we can _force_ others to do the work for us?”


	7. Chapter 7

There was a delicate jangle of metal-mesh as the corner of their curtain was pulled aside, and then a dark red hand set down a cube of glistening distilled engex, so pure it was almost translucent. Astrotrain’s order. Jazz followed the arm up, and up, and then almost bit his glossa in surprise.

It was the maroon mech who lived two doors down from Jazz, the one who came back radiating fatigue every morning just as Jazz left for the Block. He looked quite different now at the start of the dark cycle, red optics glittering and paint gleaming lustrously. He glanced at Jazz without any recognition, but as he turned to go, Astrotrain snagged the mech lightly by the wrist and pulled him close, conquering spiel apparently momentarily forgotten. 

“Hey Dead End,” his voice dropped at least one octave lower, shifting into what was probably supposed to be a seductive pitch. “How are things?”

The mech looked flatly at him. “Quiet, as you can see. Can you let go please? Motormaster will put a dent in my plating if I don’t get the dance platform polished before the other customers get here.” 

“Ah, yes,” Astrotrain beamed, running one thick finger suggestively across Dead End’s wrist, which looked comically small in his grasp. “I look forward to watching you perform again. What time do you plan to be up?”

Dead End sighed. “Maybe after you order a few more of those,” he gestured to the cube on the table. “If you don’t get me fired for dawdling before then.”

Astrotrain waved his free hand dismissively. “What’s Motormaster going to do if he makes you go? Can’t do much without his right arm, right?”

“Left arm,” Dead End corrected. “And you know we don’t do that anymore.” 

Astrotrain’s optics darkened, and his mouth pinched. “Well, you never know. A chance to revitalize our glory days could always turn up.”

Dead End snorted. “Glory days. Right. Days of offlining hanging over our heads, you mean. As if just surviving cycle to cycle isn’t difficult enough.” He twisted his wrist smartly out of Astrotrain’s grasp and stepped away before the larger mech could catch him again. “You,” he turned his attention to Jazz, cocking a hand on his hip. “Can I get you something? Anything?” It was asked dourly, though the meaning was clear enough: there were no seats for non-paying mechs in the house.

Jazz sighed a little inwardly, thinking of the meager amount of credits that he had just earned. They had barely sat in his account for three full orns. “Just...a normal cube, please. Thank you.”

His order was acknowledged with a little nod before Dead End whirled about and headed back towards the bar, where a broad-chested blue and gray mech stood behind the counter staring in their direction suspiciously. Astrotrain watched Dead End go, his face twisting with a mix of disgruntlement and desire before he grabbed his cube and took a healthy swig.

Jazz reset his vocalizer with an encouraging click and steered back to the topic. “So, you were saying? Others who could work for us?”

“That’s right!” Astrotrain blurted, distractedly tearing his gaze away from Dead End. “You know how we were always stuck searching for energon during most of the war. We just never had enough to do anything. But with the mines here, well, let’s just say we don’t have that problem anymore hmm? In fact,” and his voice dropped to a stage whisper, though it still sounded blaringly loud in the more-or-less empty space, “We have enough fuel to build and power as many ships as we want. We could launch an entire fleet of worldsweepers with bigger and better firepower!”

Right. If by ‘doing anything’ Astrotrain meant anything more permanent or destructive than the complete ravagement of their homeworld and the decimation of countless other species and planets, Jazz would have to find some way, somehow, to blow up Nelign in its entirety before whatever Astrotrain was planning happened.

He’d have to figure out a way to evacuate Soundwave and the cassettes before that, of course, while making sure they couldn’t actually do anything to stop him. Soundwave was a valuable asset to have around, assuming he wasn’t also in on...whatever this was. 

It was also possible that Astrotrain was just talking out of his aft. 

“Why haven’t we?” Jazz asked, making sure to keep his tone light and inquisitive. “If we have everything we need for that?”

Astrotrain’s expression turned decidedly sour. “Like I said,” he said meaningfully, sitting back and shifting his enormous pedes under the table, “There’s an _illusion_ here. We’re being told we’ve come to the end of the road, that we can put our blasters down and do anything we want. As long as it doesn’t involve offlining other mechs or going off on our own to wreak havoc on Cybertron.” He scoffed, downing the rest of his cube with a speed that would have left a smaller mech dizzy. “We’re letting that traitor Starscream walk around free, letting him shake hands and play nice with Autobots and Neutrals. Galvatron has the right of it - he’s a deserter and should be punished!”

The curtain was yanked aside abruptly and a smaller plain cube shoved onto the table. Jazz looked up to thank Dead End, except it was someone else this time. The burly blue-gray mech who’d been watching from behind the bar stood there, arms crossed, crimson face glowering darkly. He eyed Jazz with obvious wariness and then without any preamble, said, “Who are you?”

Astrotrain rolled his optics. “Breakdown, dial the paranoia back a little, huh? This guy works at the Block with one of Soundwave’s ranty cogs. He’s Long- uh- Leftwing.”

Breakdown stared pointedly at Jazz, but directed his skepticism to Astrotrain. “He doesn’t _have_ wings.”

Jazz coughed, reaching over to snag the cube. “I’m Leftstep,” he smiled as winningly as he could at Breakdown, whose scowl didn’t falter an inch. “I work with Rumble as a courier at the Block.” How to throw further suspicion off him? Jazz shrugged, then gestured to himself a little self-deprecatingly. “Not that many things us smaller mechs can do, you know? Never lasted long in a fight. Least at the Block, all I need to do is drive round and round.” He projected as much _harmless, forlorn_ as he could in his field. Breakdown’s ready stance relaxed a crack, though he still peered at Jazz distrustfully.

Then without warning, Breakdown’s glare shifted to Astrotrain. The large blue mech moved unsubtly, leaning down across the table so that his bulk was half between Jazz and Astrotrain before he bent down and harshly whispered, “Anyway, don’t think I didn’t hear you. Stop talking about launching ships and making weapons and handing out punishment! Don’t you know someone’s always listening?”

For all that Breakdown had lowered his voice, Jazz could indeed hear him quite clearly. He made a show of turning away and busied himself with opening his cube.

Astrotrain sneered at Breakdown. “What, you think Soundwave has nothing better to do than keep tabs on slag-talk? He’s gone as soft as heated metal in this _peace_. Anyway, Galvatron would never let anything happen to me.”

Breakdown vented hot air furiously. “You’re still talking treason!” he snapped, in a highly unsuccessful attempt at being sotto voce. “Soundwave is Decepticon Commander, not Galvatron!”

“Well, maybe that should change!” Astrotrain hissed back. “While Soundwave sits and makes these silly rosters, or hands out those ridiculous handfuls of credits, Galvatron is preparing for the inevitable. Don’t you know the Autobots will invade this place once they find out about the energon mines? Instead of all that nonsense about settling into this stupid boring life, _he’s_ developing weapons that can blow a mech apart from a distance, and if that isn’t the kind of forward thinking we need in a real leader- ”

“Stop! I’m not listening!” Breakdown stepped back, shaking his head wildly. “Whoever’s watching, I didn’t hear anything. I don’t know anything.” He seemed to have forgotten completely about Jazz as he scuttled away, turning back only to shoot a poisonous look at Astrotrain before slinking back behind the bar.

Astrotrain stared stonily back, then finally turned back to Jazz. Jazz schooled his faceplates into one of artful uncaring as he sipped at his cube and piped, “What was that all about?” 

His processor was _racing_.

“Nothing, nothing,” Astrotrain waved a hand airily. “Just an old discussion between friends.” Crimson optics bore into Jazz, and the triple-changer’s overpowering field suddenly filled with threat. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you not to go snitching off whatever you think you might have heard to anyone. Most of all not your meddlesome little coworker. Yes?”

Jazz didn’t miss a beat, cocking his helm and letting a look of vacuous confusion fill his expression. “Heard- what?” He nudged playfully at Astrotrain’s pedes under the table, then grinned. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying much attention to your friend. I’m in this really, really nice bar with _you_. All I was thinking of was how amazing this cycle is going.” He drank coyly from his cube again, affecting just a tinge of embarrassment, as if he’d been caught not paying attention. “You have such...such _presence_. I’m afraid I got a little distracted.” He brightened the illumination in his visor on one side in a wink. “Was it important? You could say it again, if you want?”

Astrotrain weighed him up for a moment, then muttered something under a vent. It sounded like a rather uncomplimentary assessment on the weight of Leftstep’s brain module. Jazz beamed at him, and then pushed the menu datapad over for Astrotrain to jab in an order for another drink.

His next report was going to be interesting, to say the least. He hadn’t received anything back from Prowl after he’d sent in his findings about the energon mines, but hearing Astrotrain’s assumption that the Autobots would mount an attack to gain control of such a large fuel supply made Jazz wince a little internally - if only because there was some merit to that idea. Just thinking about the Decepticons sitting on such a bountiful stockpile of energon was alarming to say the least. It was a natural conclusion that a significant amount of those resources would be put towards developing weaponry and building up an even more fearsome army, exactly as Astrotrain - and apparently Galvatron - seemed inclined to do, if they hadn’t started already.

But it was also becoming obvious that there was dissent between Galvatron and Soundwave, and two factions forming under each of them. Objectively, there would be a high value in letting this disagreement play out without Autobot involvement, if only to save on collateral damage for whoever got in the way. If the situation was resolved with one powerful Decepticon being taken out, that would only mean a greater advantage for the Autobots whenever the time for conflict arose again.

Except it didn’t sit right, to think of Galvatron or Astrotrain entrapping Soundwave in some cowardly conspiracy. Galvatron had come from a time long past, and had previously been unhinged enough to unleash the D-void from the Dead Universe, an abomination that would have swallowed Cybertron whole had Optimus not used the Matrix to purify Vector Sigma. Now _there_ was a mech that Jazz would trust as far as he could throw him. The crux of things was that if Soundwave had truly turned to a pacifist credo and was instituting it over the remainder of the Decepticons, then as unexpected as it was, it could actually be the biggest opportunity to end their civil war. 

It was such an unbelievable concept that Jazz paused. He suddenly had to resist the urge to run a defrag on his reality matrix; his processor was currently wrestling with wholly unfamiliar terms that he’d never truly spared a byte to think about, such as _ending the war_ , or doing anything _after the war_.

As he put in the appropriate simpering at various points of Astrotrain’s increasingly inebriated rambling, Jazz’s thoughts continued to be occupied by how he would frame this development. Prowl, he was sure, would ask him to stand by and observe within the parameters of his mission. But perhaps Optimus could be persuaded to...let Jazz alert Soundwave somehow, on the off chance that the new Decepticon leader wasn’t already aware of the plotting taking place within the walls of his own headquarters? 

It was a relief when, after nearly two joors and Astrotrain’s sixth cube, Jazz finally managed to make his escape. The account with his freshly-earned credits was wiped out. Well. Jazz supposed it was a small price to pay for the information he’d got.

He emerged out into the darkness, the late cycle well underway. His visor, replete with the most advanced photon sensors, adjusted immediately to the dim light just in time to catch what looked like a small burst of colorful sparks over the low rooftops two streets over. Almost immediately, the rest of his sensory suite was hit by a low but insistent barrage of feedback - he tilted an audial towards the distantly-increasing noise of mechs gathering and bustling about. There was laughter and chatter in the air and as Jazz automatically moved away from it, another shower of colorful sparks burst into the grayish sky, followed by a few whoops and the scattered sound of applause. 

Jazz hesitated. Part of him wanted to head back to his makeshift base and compose a message to Prowl right away, while the impressions and the details he had noted down from Astrotrain’s utter lack of discretion were still in the forefront of his processor. The other part of him recognized an opportunity to explore a deviation from the ordinary, which could offer more insights into what the Decepticons did here. If he was lucky, he might even hear more gossip that could either shoot down or substantiate his latest information, and if nothing else, he would be able to ascertain for himself the mood among other mechs that he probably wouldn’t usually see. 

Listening and observing more had always worked out in Jazz’s favor. The report could wait a joor.

Decision made, Jazz swung himself about. Now that he was paying more attention, he could see other mechs slipping out of other alleyways and heading towards the noise as well; his threat assessment protocols scanned them and dismissed them quickly. As he neared, his audials picked out at least two discordant strains of music in the air: one dour and mournful, the other upbeat with a steady bass thrumming through the melody. 

He rounded the last corner, and almost ran smack into a cart.

The mech minding it shot him a _look_ as Jazz grinned and held up his hands apologetically, before the indecent wobble of the fuel jellies spread out on display caught his attention proper. The same bright, rich pink as the crystals of the energon mines, flaked through with different minerals, they were all but calling to be slid down an intake. His processor blanked for a moment - how _long_ had it been since he’d seen such old-fashioned indulgences? Too long, that was what.

Unfortunately, he was completely out of credits. 

He eyed the table for a nanoklik more before forcibly pulling himself away. There were throngs of mechs in the street, jostling and yelling good-naturedly. Next to the jellies cart was another stall, this one selling a mouthwatering array of crystal sticks, and across from that was yet another table from which large cubes of dubiously-colored fuel mixes were being served at a speed that would surely have been frowned upon back on New Cybertron. The mournful music swelled to a crescendo somewhere ahead before dying down, and the competing cheerful, pounding melody from a different direction turned up at exactly the same time as if to drown out the end of that particularly sad song. A hoarse voice hollered a queue number and a paint color; it sounded like a detailing service.

Primus. It was a _night market_.


	8. Chapter 8

Since when did Decepticons have night markets? Since when did they get up to anything beyond violent scraps and throwing each other around for rank and gory reputation? When had this...this awkward settling into peace, this nascent colonization of an unheard-of little planet, started bringing back the all-but-forgotten aspects of a Cybertronian culture that all but teased at the edges of Jazz’s own oldest memories? 

That upbeat music floated through the air again, and before he could give it conscious thought, his pedes turned and moved in that direction. He didn’t recognize the song, but there was the distinct brassy sound of an electro-sax winding through the beats. Its sensuous resonance echoed in his audials, all but beckoning him forward. 

So focused was he on navigating through the press of frames from all directions that when the other mech was shoved towards him, it took him just a nanoklik too long to react. Instead of a smart evasion, he - and several other mechs - ended up stumbling from the sheer weight of a much larger frame suddenly bearing down on them. Lightning quick, he regained his balance somewhat after the first stumble, twisting himself out of the tangle only to look up and catch sight of a very familiar frame.

“Stop!” Rumble - and that had to be Frenzy at his back - barked crossly. 

It really was amazing what sort of volume the cassette managed to project considering his diminutive size. “No freebies, Blast Off. You know the rules!” 

The sizeable brown and purple mech who’d all but squashed the other unwitting passersby heaved himself to his pedes with a growl. “Was only asking _politely_ if anything else would do instead of creds. It’s just a cheap holovid!”

“Not any of my slagging concern if you’ve blown yer budget on engex!” a much smaller mech yelled shrilly from behind a precariously-leaning table stacked high with a colorful assortment of data chips and battered looking datapads. “And offerin’ a ‘face is not the kind of payment accepted here!”

At that pronouncement, a few lascivious hoots and some chortling emerged among the small audience the fracas had gathered. Blast Off’s faceplates tinged darker in outrage and humiliation. “I’ll show you the kind of payment accepted here!” he howled, stomping back towards the stall. “My fist in your pathetic little- ”

“No fighting either!” Frenzy hollered, wheeling about to stand beside Rumble, arms held up warningly and sonic drums whirring to life. “Just back off, Blast Off!”

“The day I take orders from a minibot is the day I - hrrrkkk!”

“Sorry!” Frenzy called unrepentantly. “Sonic booms, very unreliable, totally went off by accident. You might want to sit down for a bit!”

Blast Off’s vocalizer rattled unevenly as he listed to the side, the mechanics of his hydraulics clearly malfunctioning. A thin stream of smoke wafted out from his vents as he tottered about unsteadily, swaying from right to left. The watching mechs abruptly realized the danger they were in and scattered. As the large mech finally sank ungracefully down onto his aft with a deafening clang, Rumble hopped around, shooing the last of the curious away.

“Nothing to see here! Go on and enjoy the rest of the market! And keep out of trouble unless you want a piece of this!” And then he whirled about, throwing himself at Frenzy. They both went down in a heap of hysterical laughter. 

Jazz couldn’t stop the grin that pulled at his lips. He would never have thought that the infamous duo could be so irrepressibly, comically _strict_. Then again, all he had ever seen of them had been on the battlefield.

His mirth faded, giving way to a grim sense of doubt. How many other Decepticons had Jazz shot through the spark, and how many of those offlined had been like this outside of the fighting? Childish in their delight, looking out for each other...they didn’t seem so very different from Autobots at all. For all that Rumble and Frenzy were merciless and savage in their attacks when they fought, to see them now was like watching two sparklings bouncing around on a prone, groaning mech that they had just played a terrible prank on.

“Rumble and Frenzy, can take care of themselves.”

The spring-knife was in Jazz’s servos without conscious input, though his frame didn’t move an inch. After several nanokliks - an eternity to his suddenly-racing combat protocols - he managed to turn as if in belated surprise, smoothly palming the knife back into its wrist compartment as he did so. “Soundwave? What- what are you doing here?” 

Damn those fragging stealth mods. The general hubbub around them might have covered the other mech’s approach, but Jazz wasn’t usually caught this unaware either. That steady, powerful field was recognizable from _mechanometers_ away. He really had to look into those threat assessment protocols that seemed determined to assign Soundwave a status other than Full Alert, Weapons Ready.

Soundwave paused, visor flickering. Then his gaze moved deliberately up and around, taking in the marketplace, and Jazz suddenly noticed the two cubes of brightly-tinted fuel that Soundwave held in his hands.

Right. Foolish question.

His proximity sensors warned him this time, so Jazz didn’t flinch as two small EM fields leapt towards his back before bypassing him completely and bowling into Soundwave. 

“Soundwave, did you see- ”

“Whooped his aft reeeal good, hah!”

There was no change in Soundwave’s demeanor as he bent down and handed the cubes over, but the barest glint in his visor suddenly gave Jazz the impression that he was _smiling_. “Rumble and Frenzy, did well in imposing order.”

“Yeahhhh we did, Frenzy got ‘im real good in the- eh. Leftstep?”

“Rumble,” and slag it if Jazz wasn’t finding it even remotely difficult to smile honestly at the minibot. “Is this how you’ve been enjoying your cycle off?”

Rumble’s optics flashed. “Hey, I’ll have you know I haven’t had an off cycle in forever! And you had one- ”

“I’m not fussing!” Jazz held up both hands, laughing. “I just missed you at the Block today. Laserbeak did her best, but it wasn’t the same, you know? It was pretty, uh, quiet.”

A barely-noticeable burst of static crackled from the stolid mech beside him, and Jazz almost kinked his neck cables at the speed with which he snapped his helm around in disbelief. Had Soundwave just...

“Of course,” Rumble shot back at him, though the cassette looked mollified. “You have to have a real giving personality, you know, to talk to everyone the way I- _what_?!” this last was snapped backwards to Frenzy, who was eyeing Jazz with undisguised interest. From the look of things, he’d been poking Rumble in the back with an insistent finger ever since the red-and-black minibot had started talking.

Frenzy hissed something in Rumble’s audial, and Rumble scowled and hissed something right back. Jazz barely caught the tail-end of the high-speed exchange, and only because Rumble’s voice was rising with some agitation. “ _-he’s my_ assistant- _yea, he’s the one who jumped the Boss at Alt Mood- so what_ \- ohhhh.” 

As one, their optics lifted assessingly to Jazz, and after a moment, their thoughtful looks swung to Soundwave. And then back to Jazz again.

Unholy smirks of delight spread across their faceplates at the exact same time. 

“Boss, we just remembered we have to go do a thing- ”

“- a very cool thing- ”

“- so we’ll catch you in a bit- ”

“Leftstep, could you keep the Boss company for us meanwhile? Get him to fuel?”

“Yea, you don’t have to be afraid, Boss doesn’t bite- ”

“- _much_ , he doesn’t bite much- ”

“Bye for now, see you later!” they chorused noisily, before disappearing so quickly into the crowd that Jazz almost gaped. 

Beside him, Soundwave’s armor creaked imperceptibly. It was a fair approximation of a sigh.

If there was ever a Primus-sent opportunity, this was probably it. Jazz wouldn’t actually be able to tell Soundwave anything before receiving permission from Autobot High Command, but the thought of being able to interact again - alone - with the communications specialist outside the confines and formality of an office space were oddly appealing. Jazz still had the image when he’d first encountered Soundwave at Alt Mood saved in his primary archive, when the shadows of the bar had cast a near-dreamy quality onto dark blue plating and a gleaming red visor. That effect was mirrored now under the cozy yellow lights of the marketplace, where the buzz and milling masses of the surrounding crowd seemed to melt away in the circle of Soundwave’s field.

“I don’t have any creds,” Jazz confessed ruefully after a moment. “But I recognize a mission when I’m given one. Can I escort you to a fueling point? Have you fueled any more since I got you that cube earlier?”

Soundwave’s shoulders stiffened. “Fuel, obtained when needed.”

“Right. I’ll take that as a no. Come on, I think there was something interesting back there.” Jazz had never seen fuel in those lurid colors, but the fact that mechs had been grabbing for it could only mean good things, right? 

Soundwave hesitated.

“I have to work with Rumble every single cycle,” Jazz let a carefully-calculated pleading note enter his voice. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it if we don’t get some fuel into you.” He rippled the light on his visor as winsomely as he could, and it didn’t even feel as much of a chore as it normally did to play the charming innocent. “Please?”

He waited patiently for almost a full klik before the blue helm bowed minutely and reluctantly in defeat. “Leftstep, lead the way.”

It was surreal, having Soundwave so close behind him, following him. At any other point in his existence, this would surely have been the moment that Jazz swung a blaster around and pointed it straight at the helm of the former third-in-command. He knew he would have been ruthlessly engaged in turn, with Soundwave probably using that considerable bulk of his to shove Jazz back and trip him off balance, and then that cannon would hum to life, readying a pulsing blast that would tingle across Jazz’s frame as he twisted to avoid it before he turned the tables and took Soundwave down with a hook around the ankle and an arm across that dark blue hip-

He realized belatedly that he should stop this train of thought, right before the ping surfaced on his HUD. Jazz dismissed it without looking, so fast that it didn’t have time to repeat itself. He was _not_ going to pop a panel in public, surrounded by the enemy - what the slag was wrong with him?

Battle simulations, that was what he’d been thinking of. A completely legitimate processing thread that should perhaps be continued in the privacy of his rented room, when the object of his- when his _opponent_ wasn’t standing right next to him and possibly observing him in turn.

Instead, other burning questions he had were suddenly coming to the fore. It wouldn’t be circumspect to ask them, not really, not with his undercover persona as a lowly Decepticon. These thoughts would have been way above his pay-grade before. 

But here in this new and unfamiliar world where mechs seemed to stand more equally than elsewhere, perhaps it wouldn’t be remiss. And Prowl _had_ made a point in an earlier missive that Jazz should find out if both former and present Decepticon leadership were still in touch somehow - the newest co-captain of the Lost Light was a large, rusty sore spot in the tactician’s processor, and Prowl’s suspicions would likely need much more evidence to the contrary to be even remotely allayed.

“With everything going so well here, do you think Megatron regrets the way things turned out?” he asked casually as he navigated past three blocky mechs. "Leaving us?"

It was so slight that no one else would have noticed, but to Jazz, the little delay before Soundwave’s next step spoke volumes. 

The answer, when it finally came, was low and stilted. “Megatron, regrets nothing.”

It wasn't hard to affect disbelief. “In his speech at the trial, he said that the Decepticons had been following a flawed philosophy. He said we’d been wrong to assert ourselves, and that he had never had any guidance or wisdom to give. Doesn’t that sound like regret?”

Soundwave’s field flared. It was only for a nanoklik, but in it was a depth of emotion so dark and complicated that it caught Jazz off guard. 

Hurt. Anger. Sadness. 

And scattered inextricably through everything, the ashen traces of a bitter longing. 

It was reeled back so tightly and swiftly that Jazz might as well have imagined it.

“Megatron, doing what he must for his own peace,” Soundwave said after a long moment. His synthesized voice was inflectionless again. “Salvation, only thing left for the rest of us. Fairness, freedom, peace...Nelign, will provide. All other things, already given up.”

If Jazz was a simpler mech, he wouldn’t have heard the thin, muted meaning behind the vague words. 

_Megatron_ had been given up. If not as a mech, then at least as a leader. The flash of grief, the tight way the glyphs had been woven, all pointed to it. And it wasn’t Nelign that was providing the bridge into the future for those who’d been left behind, Jazz realized. It was Soundwave. All of it. 

In giving up a place on Cybertron, Soundwave had also given up the constant warfare with the Autobots. With Starscream helming the Neutrals in New Cybertron, any place for the Decepticons there would have had to be fought for as well, and no doubt there would have been restrictions no matter how things ended up. Instead, secluding the entire Decepticon army away on this backwater planet had freed them from the influence of Cybertron’s history, its Prime, its other leaders and its established systems. In the vacuum, from nothing, Soundwave was building the Decepticons up towards what they should have been - towards what they had wanted to be. Here, the pillars of a society that the lowest and most oppressed had only dreamed of were finally, finally taking shape.

What kind of strength did it take to pull oneself together after such abandonment? And to not abandon in return, when it would have been so much easier to survive alone? 

“Here we are.” They’d finally reached the stall that Jazz had seen when he’d first entered the market, and he felt compelled to point out the obvious in a bid to fill the heaviness that had suddenly descended between them. Soundwave came to a halt beside him, unnervingly silent. 

Jazz suddenly wished, fervently, that he’d saved at least enough credits to buy Soundwave a cube, because what kind of ridiculous mech brought another to a fuel stand just to stand around and watch that mech buy a drink for himself?

The stall-minder looked up and caught sight of them, optics widening. “Soundwave?” came the incredulous bark. “Are yer here for some of my rustwash?”

Soundwave’s armor creaked again. Then he nodded, once, very slowly. 

“Well, I’ll be slagged!” the stall-minder fluttered about, visibly excited. “Which one do yer want? Since it’s yer first time trying my concoctions, I’ll give it to yer fer a discount!”

Soundwave’s helm turned infinitesimally in Jazz’s direction, and he took it as a cue to step forward. The stall-minder shot him a startled glance as if suddenly noticing him there, but Jazz ignored him easily; a quick scan had already thrown up the observation of no visible weaponry and interestingly enough, an alt mode that looked more like it would belong in a lab than behind a cocktail stand. Instead, he turned his attention to examining the various cubes in front of them, a sudden burst of curiosity blooming. 

As he picked up this and that in a half-for-show, half-honest examination, Jazz remained keenly aware of Soundwave at his side. With the magnitude of the other mech’s revelation regarding Megatron shifting into his background processing, it felt in that moment like they could truly have just been two mechs browsing the attractive wares of a night market. Just getting to know each other better. 

He finally pointed to the stack with the fewest cubes left, a sludgy-looking fuel that had so many additives in it that it was a mottled dark purple. Soundwave regarded his choice wordlessly for several nanokliks before turning back to the stall-minder.

“Two. Full payment, transferred.”

Jazz’s servos stalled in the middle of picking up the cube he’d selected. “You don’t have to get me anything.”

“Leftstep, must suffer consequences as well.”

Hold on.

Had that been...a joke? 

Jazz might sooner have believed that he’d been transported to a different universe. Or infected with a virus that planted data-ghosts into his processor. As it was, something in his chest felt like it had tightened and flipped upside-down, and he only noticed that he’d frozen in place when Soundwave stepped up gracefully beside him and plucked a second cube from the stack.

Abruptly, Jazz realized his given errand was done. His excuses could be made convincingly, and he had no reason to stay with Soundwave any longer except-

Except Jazz suddenly wanted more. More of that staticked amusement that he’d elicited when he’d subtly made fun of Rumble earlier. More dry jokes delivered in a completely deadpan manner. More personal insights into the mech who’d made Jazz’s wartime operations a smelting Pit with his brilliant tactics and cuttingly skillful espionage.

“Would you like to come check out the music stall with me?” he asked, trying not to let any of the edgy anticipation he was feeling enter his field. “I think I heard an electro-sax back there.”

Soundwave stilled in the middle of moving to subspace his cube. 

Jazz got the immediate sense that his words were being weighed and measured, even though the larger mech hadn’t looked at him. If Soundwave was starting to get suspicious, then perhaps there wouldn’t be room for any more big questions tonight. But maybe...

Maybe that would be fine anyway.

After an almost-awkward length of time, Soundwave finished subspacing his cube. Then he turned to Jazz and dipped his helm, and Jazz’s spark began to spin faster for no reason at all.

“Leftstep, lead the way.”


End file.
